In PHP docs with every item there comes the section for for "user contributed notes" which are sometimes pretty insightful (like there php strings intro or there implode string function ). Long time ago in a galaxy far away when I used to code in PHP those useful comments not only usually saved my day, but somehow compensated for the unorthogonality (well, an understatement) of the PHP standard library and the language itself.
So - yes - I definitely prefer using worse language with better docs than the other way round (think Haskell vs PHP).
Look for instance at.NET/C#. People are writing about this cool feature it has - delegates. But in Objective-C such behaviour is natural, and besides, requires no use of additional language features. Objective-C can be explained on few pieces of paper, you just have to remember some particular rules, whereas in C# or Java (or other object oriented staticly typed language) you have for each such thing a special case, which burdens your memory.
Ok, but how long before MS abandons C++? They have already launched this funny thing called C++/CLI. Embrace, Extend, Exterminate - it is their motto. Excellent C++ support was in point 1 - I have used Visual Studios since 6.0 for C++ programming, switching from Borland C++. But we are now at point 2. MS has failed with Java, though you can perceive C# as a kind of Embracing&Extending Java at one time.
Quote from the article The names in the top level domains.UA,.BY,.AL,.SM,.MT,.MY,.VA,.PL,.IT, in that order, are on average the most vulnerable. Most country code TLDs average more than 100 dependencies per name..
The part which I have emphasized gives us a hint: in Poland there is a tradition of unreliable telecommunications network. The biggest operator is a post-communistic ineffective giant delivering low quality of service. Therefore most businesses have developed a workaround - redundancy. Many registrars (DNS operators) are also Tier-2 ISPs and have links to most polish Tier-1 ISPs. When in reality they have 1 DNS server it can show up as many IP addresses, one for every Tier-1 ISP. And this is not taken into account by this survey, as far as I have gathered from a quick glance.
Ok. I will be rated troll like last time, when I said that Debian is a very good platform for customized distributions (it was before widespread successes of ubuntu and mepis).
I see that both families of systems - the Unix heritage (Linux, Solaris, BSD less so - they are more true to the original Unix, maybe with exception of dragonflyBSD and Darwin) and the VMS heritage (I mean Windows here) are converging. The aim seems to be a kind of thread based, light-kernel operating system, that can be easily parallelized/or distributed, with object oriented interface at both Kernel and User levels. The Unix was taken in this direction by Plan9, Mach and NeXT.
Think I am a loony? look here: Plan9 shell introduction.
Unix shell (text) ---> Plan9 shell (arrays of strings) --> Microsoft shell (objects).
I'm also certain that there will come time when Windows will become Open Source, like Solaris. Not that I like Windows or whatever but Open Source is more functional, so the convergence process will also take Windows in that direction.
ZFS with DTrace are serious arguments for Solaris
on
Sun Releases ZFS
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· Score: 3, Insightful
About two years ago Solaris seemed doomed. Linux with the advent of 2.6 kernel started to be a real enterprise level contender. Now with ZFS and DTrace Solaris (and Open Source licencse) looks to be a real contender.
Now really dear sir, how am I to use 2.0, 2.2 or 2.4, since all new features, which I need are only in 2.6? Because everybody believes that 2.6 is a stable release (which in theory is indicated by the even release-subnumber) features got added to 2.6 and nobody bothers with backporting them to 2.4. And this is really a big problem. If there was a development version, then 2.6 would be rock-solid stable, I would get no freezes, panics and other nasty events and the features would go to the stable kernel - like it used to be.
The problem is that I have extensively and exclusively used Linux 2.6 the whole last year since I migrated from 2.4 because it lacked the features I needed. Back in the good old days it was that Linux had two versions: the development one - uneven numbers - like 2.1 and stable - even numbers - like 2.0. Now the development is in the "stable" branch - 2.6. And this results in big problems. You can get used to them on the desktop, you get mad having to drive to the server room because your 2.6.x server has literally FROZEN (no, not a nice kernel panic).
And as to testing - I would like to see Linux well tested, before it is released or I go elsewhere (no, not meaning Windows of course!)
1) the very need for such tests means that current 2.6.x kernels are very unstable - this means that Linux currently does not have any stable version - not good
2) remember Microsoft? they have been always doing nightly builds of Windows since the beginning of the time; the only thing sure is that it did not improve the quality of the code...
... but you could try typera.tk. It is not a typing tutor, rather a typing tester, but I found it very exciting. And the texts are very, very, very funny. I sometimes cannot type because I can't stop laughing.
Quote from the article: A start-up called PathScale offers an open-source compiler that's compatible with GCC 3.3. "Our company is trying to be the GCC alternative for people who care about high performance," said Len Rosenthal, vice president of marketing for PathScale..
From this page and their claims about GCC front end (source code) compatibility I infer that their compiler is just an back-end (code generator) to GCC using GCC's front-end. I think that writing full C/C++/Fortran front end with GCC compatibility would be no small feat (especially that most big companies use Edison Design Group front-end, developing only their back-ends).
What looks a little bit suspicious are PathScale's performance claims. It looks like the PathScale compiler for x86 generates much faster code than Intel's own in-house compiler (which is being developed by people hired from KAI known for creating a very high performance compiler) or the industry-famous Portland Group compiler. I would be more than happy to see that PathScale's product delivers what is promised.
I'm so sorry, ...
on
GCC 4.0 Preview
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· Score: 4, Informative
but the reason it takes forever to compile KDE lies in fact that it uses extensively the templates. While templates (a.k.a. generics) are a very useful language feature, they increase compile times. Including support for export template feature could help but only when anybody would use it in their code.
You can make an experiment and try compiling KDE with Intel C++ or Comeau C++ compilers, and see that not much can be gained comparing to GCC.
For those who don't like to read long articles. In the LCD business everybody infringes someone's patents. However, up till now, nobody has sued noone, because it would end in immediate counterclaim. Unfortunately Honeywell does not make LCD's, and this makes them invulnerable.
I think that such claims will soon open the eyes of big businesses to threat they are facing. It is not only open source that is at risk. If you produce something (e.g. Windows) and you have a lot of money (e.g. Microsoft) then you are under threat too. The patent law sword has two edges.
I don't know - is this a useful technique or just another trick? When the salesman tells you that laptop runs 6 hrs. on system battery, but only if you don't touch it - how useful is this for you?
Reminds me of other fallacies: the gigahertz myth, the LCD display reaction-time. myth
www.fuckpoland.info (I know, it is a NXDOMAIN). But seriously, the problem is, that everybody thought that polish government was against patents. What they really wanted is to get some concessions in other fields, like more money for the farmers or something like this. I think that Mr Marcinski and his boss Mr Kleiber have just played a game, and we, silly, thought that they seriously oppose software patents. Or maybe this sudden change in presented position has something to do Bill G.? In Poland he has quite a lot of influence.
Slashdot Mirror
In PHP docs with every item there comes the section for for "user contributed notes" which are sometimes pretty insightful (like there php strings intro or there implode string function ). Long time ago in a galaxy far away when I used to code in PHP those useful comments not only usually saved my day, but somehow compensated for the unorthogonality (well, an understatement) of the PHP standard library and the language itself. So - yes - I definitely prefer using worse language with better docs than the other way round (think Haskell vs PHP).
... to discover that they are using Microsoft Linux ;)
Look here.
Ada is back.
Will he also have to provide his id? He can usually be found at: root@some.host.name.there ;)
ever heard of RTTI and reflection?
Look for instance at .NET/C#. People are writing about this cool feature it has - delegates. But in Objective-C such behaviour is natural, and besides, requires no use of additional language features. Objective-C can be explained on few pieces of paper, you just have to remember some particular rules, whereas in C# or Java (or other object oriented staticly typed language) you have for each such thing a special case, which burdens your memory.
Did you say "Google Web Rootkit"?
Ok, but how long before MS abandons C++? They have already launched this funny thing called C++/CLI.
Embrace, Extend, Exterminate - it is their motto.
Excellent C++ support was in point 1 - I have used Visual Studios since 6.0 for C++ programming, switching from Borland C++. But we are now at point 2.
MS has failed with Java, though you can perceive C# as a kind of Embracing&Extending Java at one time.
Yes - the ability to take corruption into account is what differs mainframes (and also high-end IBM UNIX servers like p595) from PCs.
Quote from the article The names in the top level domains .UA, .BY, .AL, .SM, .MT, .MY, .VA, .PL, .IT, in that order, are on average the most vulnerable. Most country code TLDs average more than 100 dependencies per name..
The part which I have emphasized gives us a hint: in Poland there is a tradition of unreliable telecommunications network. The biggest operator is a post-communistic ineffective giant delivering low quality of service. Therefore most businesses have developed a workaround - redundancy. Many registrars (DNS operators) are also Tier-2 ISPs and have links to most polish Tier-1 ISPs. When in reality they have 1 DNS server it can show up as many IP addresses, one for every Tier-1 ISP. And this is not taken into account by this survey, as far as I have gathered from a quick glance.
Ok. I will be rated troll like last time, when I said that Debian is a very good platform for customized distributions (it was before widespread successes of ubuntu and mepis).
I see that both families of systems - the Unix heritage (Linux, Solaris, BSD less so - they are more true to the original Unix, maybe with exception of dragonflyBSD and Darwin) and the VMS heritage (I mean Windows here) are converging. The aim seems to be a kind of thread based, light-kernel operating system, that can be easily parallelized/or distributed, with object oriented interface at both Kernel and User levels. The Unix was taken in this direction by Plan9, Mach and NeXT.
Think I am a loony? look here: Plan9 shell introduction.
Unix shell (text) ---> Plan9 shell (arrays of strings) --> Microsoft shell (objects).
I'm also certain that there will come time when Windows will become Open Source, like Solaris. Not that I like Windows or whatever but Open Source is more functional, so the convergence process will also take Windows in that direction.
About two years ago Solaris seemed doomed. Linux with the advent of 2.6 kernel started to be a real enterprise level contender. Now with ZFS and DTrace Solaris (and Open Source licencse) looks to be a real contender.
when Intel CEO Otellini said he would buy an apple.
Now really dear sir, how am I to use 2.0, 2.2 or 2.4, since all new features, which I need are only in 2.6? Because everybody believes that 2.6 is a stable release (which in theory is indicated by the even release-subnumber) features got added to 2.6 and nobody bothers with backporting them to 2.4. And this is really a big problem. If there was a development version, then 2.6 would be rock-solid stable, I would get no freezes, panics and other nasty events and the features would go to the stable kernel - like it used to be.
The problem is that I have extensively and exclusively used Linux 2.6 the whole last year since I migrated from 2.4 because it lacked the features I needed. Back in the good old days it was that Linux had two versions: the development one - uneven numbers - like 2.1 and stable - even numbers - like 2.0. Now the development is in the "stable" branch - 2.6. And this results in big problems. You can get used to them on the desktop, you get mad having to drive to the server room because your 2.6.x server has literally FROZEN (no, not a nice kernel panic).
And as to testing - I would like to see Linux well tested, before it is released or I go elsewhere (no, not meaning Windows of course!)
1) the very need for such tests means that current 2.6.x kernels are very unstable - this means that Linux currently does not have any stable version - not good
2) remember Microsoft? they have been always doing nightly builds of Windows since the beginning of the time; the only thing sure is that it did not improve the quality of the code...
... but you could try typera.tk. It is not a typing tutor, rather a typing tester, but I found it very exciting. And the texts are very, very, very funny. I sometimes cannot type because I can't stop laughing.
Quote from the article: A start-up called PathScale offers an open-source compiler that's compatible with GCC 3.3. "Our company is trying to be the GCC alternative for people who care about high performance," said Len Rosenthal, vice president of marketing for PathScale..
From this page and their claims about GCC front end (source code) compatibility I infer that their compiler is just an back-end (code generator) to GCC using GCC's front-end. I think that writing full C/C++/Fortran front end with GCC compatibility would be no small feat (especially that most big companies use Edison Design Group front-end, developing only their back-ends).
What looks a little bit suspicious are PathScale's performance claims. It looks like the PathScale compiler for x86 generates much faster code than Intel's own in-house compiler (which is being developed by people hired from KAI known for creating a very high performance compiler) or the industry-famous Portland Group compiler. I would be more than happy to see that PathScale's product delivers what is promised.
but the reason it takes forever to compile KDE lies in fact that it uses extensively the templates. While templates (a.k.a. generics) are a very useful language feature, they increase compile times. Including support for export template feature could help but only when anybody would use it in their code.
You can make an experiment and try compiling KDE with Intel C++ or Comeau C++ compilers, and see that not much can be gained comparing to GCC.
Thank you ;) Your summary was even shorter than mine.
For those who don't like to read long articles. In the LCD business everybody infringes someone's patents. However, up till now, nobody has sued noone, because it would end in immediate counterclaim. Unfortunately Honeywell does not make LCD's, and this makes them invulnerable.
I think that such claims will soon open the eyes of big businesses to threat they are facing. It is not only open source that is at risk. If you produce something (e.g. Windows) and you have a lot of money (e.g. Microsoft) then you are under threat too. The patent law sword has two edges.
I don't know - is this a useful technique or just another trick? When the salesman tells you that laptop runs 6 hrs. on system battery, but only if you don't touch it - how useful is this for you?
Reminds me of other fallacies: the gigahertz myth, the LCD display reaction-time. myth
www.fuckpoland.info (I know, it is a NXDOMAIN). But seriously, the problem is, that everybody thought that polish government was against patents. What they really wanted is to get some concessions in other fields, like more money for the farmers or something like this. I think that Mr Marcinski and his boss Mr Kleiber have just played a game, and we, silly, thought that they seriously oppose software patents. Or maybe this sudden change in presented position has something to do Bill G.? In Poland he has quite a lot of influence.