Good point, I meant "large" as opposed to "small". Medium-scale is a more correct term. However, the vast majority of Java web applications are "medium-scale" so I would stick to my point by saying "writing your own framework is almost always the wrong choice for a Java web application."
I guess in Wicket I get most bugged by the "parallel hierarchies" of things I've add()ed in the java, and then represented in the HTML. At least that gets me the most stack traces...
Well, that's a direct result of the hierarchy being defined in code rather than the template. Think of it as one step short of using layout managers and foregoing HTML templates entirely (a la GWT). Plus, out-of-sync hierarchies result in a fairly friendly message telling you exactly which side is out of sync and where. It's not accurate to just call this a "stack-trace" as if the framework provides no help in locating and solving the problem. Again, my experience has been different in that I don't even think about "parallel hierarchies" any more. It just seems natural that the template would need to match the logical hierarchy defined in code.
For reusable page components, I guess the "super lightweight" answer is either JSP includes (which admittedly tends to be dependent on page scope variables), use of Java objects that spit out HTML (which doesn't have to be as big a sin as people pretend), or, a bit more recently, use of custom tags.
Includes are basically a really primitive version of components. As you mention, they tend to depend on external scope rather than being truly independent, reusable objects. They work, but they're far less elegant and, imo, far less maintainable and much more error-prone than true components.
"Java objects that spit out HTML" sounds like a component to me. I mean, Wicket components are Java objects that spit out HTML, right? Again, you're free to write them yourself if you want but it's tough to justify when there are already a number of frameworks that have done most of the work for you.
So far in my (jaundiced) observation its been about 50/50 like Wicket or dislike.
hmmm... if anywhere close to half of the people that use Wicket dislike it, it seems like at least a few of them would have related the experience on a blog or something. And certainly such a horrible ratio of like/dislike would be evident on the user list in the form of a lot of angry, dissatisfied people. Instead, just about everyone who's used it raves about it and the (very busy) Wicket user list has more than the usual amount of praise for the framework. If I had to guess, I would say it's more like 95/5 like to dislike. In fact, one of the strongest arguments for Wicket is the nearly unanimous enthusiasm for the framework by those who use it.
Why should some guy in Alaska *not* take advantage of the technology available to him? Why do you seem to have such a problem with what someone *else* is doing? Are you being harmed in some way by his actions? Are his actions immoral?
If your objection to his pursuit of entertainment is rooted in some kind of facist belief that no one should ever break any law for any reason, then of course I would have to ask how may laws you yourself have broken. Ever broken the speed limit because you were in a hurry? If so, what gives you the right to decide what laws to follow based solely on your desires and your personal priorities? I suggest you take a long look in the mirror before taking such a patronizing tone with others.
First, I need to apologize for calling you a "troll" in an earlier post. It sounds like you just have a very different view of things, and that of course doesn't give me the right to insult you.
I'll just say that your criticisms of Wicket are so entirely opposite of my experience with the framework that it's frustrating and somewhat confusing to read your posts.
So you do seem to be advocating the "write your own framework" approach, which I've already addressed to a certain degree. I'll add/reiterate that it amounts to reinventing the wheel for every web application you write, runs completely counter to the concepts of code reuse and modularity and, in short, is almost always the wrong choice for a large-scale application when there are so many good Java frameworks to choose from.
You talk about "sacrificing the ability to adjust HTML and CSS and Javascript in TEXT on the alter of Objects" but, again, I find myself agreeing with your point but failing to see how it applies to Wicket. Wicket doesn't interfere with your use of plain HTML and CSS. This is one of its advantages.
You mentioned a "mental gap" in an earlier post and I honestly think that's why you see Wicket as getting in the way of, rather than augmenting, improving and accelerating your web programming. Some people look at a web page and see a big linear string of text. I see a concentric arrangement of components (whether I'm using PHP, Java or whatever -- it's always been that way). Some people find that OO concepts fit most of their programming problems really well while others see it as overkill.
Wicket is simply not intended for programmers who don't "get" or like component-oriented, heavily OO frameworks. It's at the opposite end of the spectrum and the documentation, etc. makes this pretty clear. So I can't help but wonder why you ever used it in the first place and what exactly you expected to get out of it when it clearly doesn't fit your preferred, procedural way of working.
Maybe especially core Wicket, which isn't trying to do much but wrap HTML bits as objects. What really is the benefit of that? Nothing seems simpler and it often seems to be getting in the way-- maybe it's a mental gap problem, but often I end up having to put placeholder HTML in the page, and the set visibility = null. And the Ajax support is so-so.
Sounds like your problems with Wicket are due to your total lack of knowledge about the framework. Hint: there's nothing called "visibility" in Wicket. There are isVisible() and setVisible() methods on the Component class, but they take and return a boolean primitive so setting "visible" to null would result in a compile error. And no, I don't believe you just made a typo. Nobody who uses the framework would forget such a common method. Maybe you used Wicket for a day or two in the distant past, but you're obviously in no position to comment on the relative merits and deficiencies of the framework. In short, you appear to be a troll.
I felt the same way about GWT -- it's just too much of a black box for my taste. Having said that, it's probably a good idea to reevaluate it now that I use a lot more Ajax and am far more comfortable with JavaScript than I was a year or so ago.
Regarding Wicket, however, I couldn't disagree more. I think Wicket offers by far the best balance of productivity and maintainability compared to any action or component-based Java web framework out there. There are, however, a couple of caveats.
1) Wicket's sweet spot is complex applications (esp. with a lot of Ajax) that *happen* to be served over http. iow, it's probably not a great fit for simple, high-volume public sites (although Wicket devs may disagree by pointing out some of the new features in 1.3 that offer excellent support for stateless pages).
2) You won't like Wicket if any time you see a decorator or composite pattern you either a) don't recognize it or b) refer to it as an "over-engineered" solution. Of course, if that's the case, you probably shouldn't be using Java in the first place.
In general, if you enjoy programming in Java and you like the idea of writing web UI code in more or less the same way you write domain code, you'll probably prefer Wicket to just about any other framework. To back that statement up a bit, I'll mention that *all* of the programmers on my team now write Wicket UI code as well as middle tier code even though some of them have never written a web app before in their life. That was not the case when we used Tapestry because, as nice as that framework is, you still have to think in terms of the request/response cycle to do anything complex and you have to learn a lot about it by rote, as opposed to Wicket where you can learn most of the framework simply by exploring it from within your IDE.
Seriously. If you're gonna pretend it's an applet, then REALLY do it like GWT does, fake JVM and all. This Wicket stuff.... ugh. keeping the html view and java in synch for anythign complex is SO IRRITATING.
Sure, the "purity" of GWT's approach is undeniably appealing, but I'm reluctant to give up the simplicity of HTML templates, regular Java code that runs on a real JVM, and regular, non-generated JavaScript. As far as being irritated by having to keep your ultra-simple Wicket HTML templates in sync with your straightforward, plain Java code, I'll just say that it's much better than having to keep templates with embedded logic in sync with an abstract, runtime enhanced class along with a bunch of XML configuration. So, coming from Tapestry 4, code/template synchronization in Wicket has been a complete non-issue for me.
Seriously, after years of Struts and stuff like Wicket, I don't see any real advantage over "Model 2+" (Servlet/JSP pairs) that I started with in 2001. There is a benefit to simplicity and writing HTML in HTML and writing Javascript in Javascript that over-engineers who are, frankly, a little OO-obsessed just don't get.
I'm not sure if you're advocating the abandonment of all web frameworks or if you just don't see the advantage of a component-based framework as opposed to an action-based framework. The problem with a "bare-bones, no framework" approach is that it usually translates into a custom framework for each application and/or a big mess of copy-and-paste spaghetti code that can only be deciphered by the original author.
The advantage of component-based frameworks is that components naturally correspond to objects whereas action-based frameworks lend themselves to a more procedural approach. I also think that web pages themselves make more sense when viewed as a collection of potentially reusable components (even when I wrote PHP apps, I wrote them in a component-oriented style), but I guess that's a matter of opinion.
Regarding that last statement about "writing HTML in HTML and writing Javascript in Javascript", I would just add "writing Java in Java" and point out
That list of commands -- while trivial -- is actually more work than right-clicking my project in Eclipse and selecting Team->Share Project. So, I think the "ease of use" argument works in Subversion's favor until Git has better IDE support.
It's also trivial to create a local repository with Git. "git init" and you're running. Sure, you can do it with CVS or SVN, but you've got to create a special directory, check your stuff in and then check it out. It might not sound like much, but that extra little barrier was enough to keep me from even considering SVN/CVS for small throw-away projects that I wouldn't hesitate to keep under version control with Git.
On the contrary, until Git has better IDE plugins it's actually easier to use Subversion for "throw-away" projects. First, use a single repository with a top-level directory per project (separate repositories is overkill for all but the largest projects). Second, (this is with Eclipse/Subclipse) right-click on the project and select Team->Share. Done. I assume it's just as easy from other popular IDE's with decent Subversion support.
Well, you got me. I'm actually a deacon in the Church of AGW. We were trying to keep the existence of the church under wraps for the time being, attempting to disseminate our scriptures in the form of "scientific evidence", but you're obviously way too smart to fall for that. So there you go. Your paranoid delusion of a pseudo-religious worldwide conspiracy to scam the human race into developing cleaner forms of energy is, in fact, true.
The lack of proof just shows that we are trying to skip that process and go directly into religious conviction.
Obviously, you are the one engaging in religious conviction because you choose to ignore the opinion of the vast majority of scientists involved in climate change research. You are the church in this not-very-useful religious analogy of yours, with your head buried in the sand and unwilling to accept the data.
To give you a little bit of perspective on just how far out of the scientific mainstream your religious beliefs are, even Fox News considers you to be part of a fringe group of man-made climate change deniers. Once we start to feel the effects of climate change in more obvious and profound ways, I'm sure "fringe group" will be substituted with "cult".
Is it possible that anthropogenic warming might save us from an Ice Age, a la Pournelle/Niven?
Yeah, let's hope for that. In fact, what we really need is less of this annoying scientific data proving that humans are causing unprecedented global warming, and more hope! Some kind of future technology will surely come along to save us, right? It happens in the movies all the time so why not?
I, like you, have complete faith that someone, somewhere will eventually figure out what's going on and what to do about it. Either that or we'll get really lucky.
In any event, I'm sure there's nothing to worry about. I've decided to take what's known in the scientific community as a "wait-and-see" attitude. I'm going to wait until I personally see a lot of people actually dying from global warming before I do anything.
Possibly, but not half as crazy as the anti-environmentalists that bring up the straw man of economic disaster as a reason to take a "wait and see" approach towards climate change. One primary flaw in your "argument" is that you assume switching to clean energy technologies is a cost when, in fact, it represents an economic opportunity. Lots of new jobs, a re-invigoration of competition in the energy sector, etc. Another flaw is the implication that there is some other, unspecified, option for the human race that doesn't involve switching from fossil energy to a radically different energy source. Even if global warming is not caused/accelerated by the burning of fossil fuels, we still have to find a new energy source because fossil fuel is only a short-term solution to our energy needs at this point.
So, to use the number in your analogy, let's say there's a 50% chance that the pollution from fossil fuel is a major contributor to global warming or otherwise dangerous climate change (btw, 50% might have been a reasonable number 10 years or so ago, but now it just makes you look an anti-environmentalist nut job). OK, so we have to fundamentally transform the world's energy supply over the next few decades regardless of environmental considerations. So, gee, why not nip this climate change thing in the bud at the same time, or, at least eliminate the strong probability of our contribution to it?
The arguments against a switch to clean energy just become increasingly feeble, desperate and crazy with each passing day.
frankly, no, it's not ok. not when your talking about making far reaching economic fuckups that will hurt people who can least afford it.
What "economic fuckups" are you talking about? The creation of a new energy economy based on renewable, non-polluting sources? A lot of new jobs and economic opportunities will be created, but I don't see how it's a "fuckup". Sure, money will change hands and there will be various minor economic disruptions, but I have yet to see any serious research showing that a shift to clean energy technology will cause any kind of economic disaster. On the other hand, massive economic disaster is assured if global warming continues at its current pace, so you're arguing for some short-term economic stability (which may or may not be a good thing) at the expense of long-term survival. No exactly a compelling position.
not when there's still HUGE holes in the hypothesis that man made c02 is warming the planet
But those holes are getting smaller every day while the holes in the competing theories are getting larger. Your statement might have been reasonable 5-10 years ago, but now it puts you squarely in the camp of extremist, head-in-the-sand, climate change deniers. The burden of proof has shifted to people like yourself to refute the rest of the scientific community's finding that humans and our pollution are indeed are a major cause of global warming.
I find it fundamentally flawed however as counting by hand is extremely inefficient.
Inefficiency is not intrinsically a flaw, it's simply an attribute. Whether or not it's a flaw depends on the context. If we're talking about a for-profit business venture, then inefficiency is probably a flaw, but we're talking about a vote counting process. Inaccuracy is a flaw, and anything that might lead to inaccuracy such as the vulnerabilities found in all current electronic voting machines, but inefficiency doesn't prevent the process from achieving its goal (an accurate vote tally), so it's clearly *not* a flaw.
Not only is it a slow, labor intensive task but it is also open to human error and other technical issues (hanging chads, etc).
Oh boo-hoo. The last time I checked, human error and hanging chads cannot be automatically propagated across any number of voting machines in the form of a virus designed to alter the outcome of an election. And who cares if the process is slow and labor-intensive? Again, this is not a business we're talking about. Efficiency just isn't very important. Correctness, confidentiality, integrity and the ability to accurately assess security risks are important.
There is no real point of denying it, computer voting is coming.
That is an outrageous statement. It's like saying "there's no real point of denying it, global warming is going to melt all the polar ice so we might as well get used to it and not bother trying to fix the problem." I'd rather do the obvious,
Instead of saying "Oh this new system doesn't work in it's current incarnation, we should go back to the other method" we should be asking "The new method we are trying to implement is flawed, how should we change it?"
Easy answer: don't use the new, flawed system. Use the existing system that has fewer flaws, is better suited to the task at hand, and carries a vastly lower overall risk. Your logic is backwards. Instead of saying, "we should replace all of our voting machines so let's come up with a better replacement" we should say "if we can find a better way to conduct our voting process, let's use it". So far, a better alternative has not materialized.
So you're suggesting that it's illogical to support Al Gore but to condemn Ted Stevens? That's interesting.
On the one hand, you have an old, corrupt fool who doesn't even understand what the word "internet" means and on the other hand you have a guy who may reasonably be called one of the most visionary mainstream politicians of our time, given his proactive, leading-edge involvement in both the internet and environmental issues.
Thanks for getting that infamous Gore quote straight. Here's a little more info from Snopes:
It is true, though, that Gore was popularizing the term "information superhighway" in the early 1990s (although he did not, as is often claimed by others, coin the phrase himself) when few people outside academia or the computer/defense industries had heard of the Internet, and he sponsored the 1988 National High-Performance Computer Act (which established a national computing plan and helped link universities and libraries via a shared network) and cosponsored the Information Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992 (which opened the Internet to commercial traffic).
I think the worst you can say about Gore's involvement with the internet is that he played an instrumental role in transforming it from an academic/military tool into the thing that you and I are arguing on right now. However you want to describe it, it's no small accomplishment.
Now compare that to Ted Stevens' accomplishments....chirp......chirp......chirp...
By the way, since Gore was "involved in plenty of scandals", you should have no problem citing them and recounting whether or not he was vindicated.
Here's another fun comparison: The Tesla costs $98,000, does 0-60 in 4 seconds, has a curb weight of 2500 lbs, gets the equivalent of roughly 135 mpg and is a *zero-emissions vehicle*
The 2007 Porsche 911 GT3 RS costs $123,000, also does 0-60 in 4 seconds, has a curb weight of 3030 lbs, gets about 20 mpg and emits all the usual pollutants.
So for $35,000 less, the Tesla outperforms the GT3 RS (due to the drastically lower curb weight), gets about 7 times better "gas mileage", is far more reliable (due to the simplicity of an electric motor vs. an ICE), can be recharged at home in about 3.5 hours, is far more environmentally friendly, and helps to reduce our dependancy on foreign oil.
As far as resale value is concerned, the 911 will rapidly decrease in value as it reaches 100K miles (since an ICE and conventional transmission will eventually require a full rebuild or replacement). The Tesla, OTOH, requires a new battery pack every 100K miles, but is otherwise good to go for much longer than the Porsche without major problems. So I would expect the resale value to hold up just fine.
hmmm.... decisions decisions....
Now, the above comparison is totally arbitrary as I'm selectively highlighting certain features of these two vehicles and ignoring others, just as you did. I picked the Porsche based on the same criteria you used (similar 0-60 drag time). I could have compared the Tesla to a number of Ferrari's or Lamborgini's, which would have made the Tesla look like a supercar-killer that just happens to be a ZEV.
What's important about the Tesla is that it proves that a practical (i.e. street-legal, decent range, quick recharge time, reliable, etc.) and insanely high-performance 100% electric vehicle can be built *today* that can actually compete in the auto enthusiast market. This is an incredible achievement with far-reaching implications and it's a shame if you can't see that.
I also have to mention that you are definitely not in the target market for a Tesla roadster, so your evaluation of the car needs to be seen in that light. If you were in the target market, you would have known enough to compare the Tesla with a similarly performing car instead of the Z06. The most obvious example would be the Lotus Elise (or the Exige) upon which it is based and, believe me, there simply aren't many (if any) potential sports car buyers out there losing sleep trying to decide between a Z06 and an Elise. They are almost at opposite ends of the performance spectrum.
The only thing they did poorly was fail to realize how much the techie world is hot and bothered over ANY news about the iPhone.
No, what they did poorly was their job as problem solvers. They made the classic mistake of trying to solve a problem in reverse -- they started out with an assumption and then looked for evidence to support that assumption. For whatever reason, they wanted to rule out Cisco as the cause, so they did. This prevented them from finding the real cause as quickly as they might have.
Had they kept an open mind, they would have looked for more evidence before making a determination. For example, they could have asked some other universities (who undoubtedly now have iPhones on their wireless networks) whether or not the same type of problem was occurring there. With the answer being "no", they would have learned that the problem must have something to do with the combination of the iPhone and their specific network. That would have opened the doors to start looking at network configuration and/or faulty networking equipment. Obviously, that's exactly what happened in the end, but my point is that they erected a barrier in the problem solving process by "trusting" their Cisco equipment rather than suspecting it along with everything else.
I don't think the Duke IT people are incompetent, unintelligent, lacking in education, etc. Rather, I think this is an interesting little case study that illustrates how even highly competent people can allow their preconceptions to undermine their problem solving efforts. After all, our instincts, gut reactions, feelings, etc. are extremely useful when diagnosing a problem. They are often correct or at least highly informed on a level that is difficult to quantify. So, it's not easy to consider that your instincts may be completely wrong -- that you may be looking at an entirely new and surprising situation in which your instincts only serve to mislead you. Effective problem solving requires creativity, deliberate role-playing (e.g. "playing devil's advocate") and a certain amount of (forced) objectivity. Unfortunately, too few technical professionals display these traits when attempting to diagnose a problem and fail to understand that problem solving, in a general sense, is a discipline unto itself.
If the battle was openness then Apple II would win. Instead what happened was the 98% of businesses that had IBM Selectric typewriters bought IBM PC's.
Well, the brand name certainly helped, but so did Lotus 123, WordStar, MultiMate, WordPerfect, dBase, etc. At almost any point in the 80's, the most desirable business software was available for the PC and not the Apple II. Obviously, it quickly became a chicken-and-egg situation but software played a critical role in the PC's dominance right from the beginning (not that I'm happy about it).
As for the Mac, it sold really well to an entirely different market because it was the only computer with graphics, typography, laser printer. In 1984 you did typesetting the same way it was done in 1884, but by 1988 you were using a Mac. The IBM PC and the Mac simply did not compete with each other.
hmm... the HP LaserJet was available in 1984 and Ventura Publisher came out in 1986 -- a lot of businesses were definitely using PC's for typesetting from the mid to late eighties. It just wasn't quite as cut and dried as you suggest.
As a previous poster said, if that $90 in 2-3 years is a deal-breaker, you shouldn't buy an iPhone in the first place. Of course, by the time you actually need to replace the battery, Apple's price will have gone down and/or cheaper 3rd party replacements will be available.
Also, it would appear that Apple is using a high-end (and therefore expensive) battery in these things. All of the reviews confirm an extremely long battery life. So, I'm not sure that $90 including labor and shipping represents price-gouging at all (I guess that's the charge being made in this story, since it's never been a secret that the iPhone battery is not user-replaceable).
I think chimpanzees, apes, dolphins and other intelligent animals most certainly do "dream of greatness" in their own way. Of course, I'm just guessing, but so are you.
After all, we were told for many years that humans are special because we have language. Then, when it was irrefutably proven that other animals have the power of language, it was said that humans are special because we use tools. Now that we have quite a bit of footage of primates actually building -- not just using -- tools I haven't heard anyone trying to claim that humans are different than animals in any particular way, until now.
I think it's safe to assume that your baseless claim is just as false as all the others and when we can reliably read the minds of animals people like yourself will very surprised to find that they are not quite as special as they had hoped to believe.
So your argument is that because people tend to be egocentric, we aren't causing global warming? It's tough to even respond to that kind of tautological, backwards "wisdom", but I'll give it a shot.
First, your argument easily works both ways regarding climate change. It is incredibly egocentric to believe that we bear no responsibility for the effect our actions have on the environment. Rather than causing us to be overly concerned for the environment, it's far more likely that our self-centered psychological predispositions would lead us to damage it, just as a sociopath is not aware of or concerned with the effects his actions have on the environment around him.
Second, your assertion that "to think that a species that is outweighed by certain insect species could change the global climate of a planet is just silly" is, well, just silly. For example, if we detonated the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal tomorrow, it would surely have an immediate, quite noticeable and most likely devastating effect on the climate. This simple observation should put to rest your deeply flawed belief that we have no more power over our environment than insects. I could cite an almost endless number of other examples of how humans can and do transform the environment in far more profound ways than any insect species. Here are a few: cities, agricultural land transformation; clear cutting of forests; dams and reservoirs; dumps and landfills; draining of wetlands; commercial fishing and, to bring it back on topic, the emission of billions of metric tons of pollutants into the air every year. Please list the insect activities that have an equal impact on the enviroment.
Third, you fail to cite even one *fact* to support your starry-eyed claim that humans cannot alter the climate even though nearly the entire scientific community disagrees with you. Instead, you seem to think that your tired platitudes about the sun revolving around the earth are more enlightened than the well-researched conclusions of people who actually study this subject for a living. Talk about egocentric...
Huh? How does the fact that MySQL is pre-installed (but not enabled) on OS X Server make it the "default" database for OS X and what does that have to do with using OS X as a development environment? If you're running OS X Server and you don't need MySQL, just don't turn it on.
The only database-related issue that would make using OS X as a dev environment inconvenient would be the need to run MS SQL Server locally. Just about any other database runs fine on OS X and there are several commercial ODBC vendors as well as a free option.
Absolutely. It's the lack of Exchange integration that keeps Macs out of most offices. Apple's upcoming open source calendar server might change that. If Apple can make a compelling case for replacing Exchange with iCal Server in an all-Windows environment, then the door starts to open for Macs on the corporate desktop.
Re:Yes, but it's rails... ;)
on
Rails Cookbook
·
· Score: 1
Go straight to Objective C on OS X. Apple's development tools (e.g. XCode with Interface Builder, free) make it pretty easy to get started and the language is well established so you can find books, etc. More importantly, you'll be programming in an environment with first-rate multimedia support.
This isn't 10 rich guys and 30 lawers going, "Muwhahaha", this is some web team figuring that they're no different from the thousands of other coders like us that break the occasional license unbeknownst to our bosses.
Astounding -- you knowingly expose your employer to legal liability by violating software licenses *and* you're a programmer? Did the whole "Free Software" thing that comes up on Slashdot every once in a while just sail right over your head or what?
You are in a much smaller minority than you apparently think. Between the habitually law-abiding, the regular folk who value their paychecks, and those of us who actively advocate Free Software, no programmer I know would use any software in their company's products or services without researching the license, much less intentionally violate a license.
Slashdot Mirror
Good point, I meant "large" as opposed to "small". Medium-scale is a more correct term. However, the vast majority of Java web applications are "medium-scale" so I would stick to my point by saying "writing your own framework is almost always the wrong choice for a Java web application."
Well, that's a direct result of the hierarchy being defined in code rather than the template. Think of it as one step short of using layout managers and foregoing HTML templates entirely (a la GWT). Plus, out-of-sync hierarchies result in a fairly friendly message telling you exactly which side is out of sync and where. It's not accurate to just call this a "stack-trace" as if the framework provides no help in locating and solving the problem. Again, my experience has been different in that I don't even think about "parallel hierarchies" any more. It just seems natural that the template would need to match the logical hierarchy defined in code.
Includes are basically a really primitive version of components. As you mention, they tend to depend on external scope rather than being truly independent, reusable objects. They work, but they're far less elegant and, imo, far less maintainable and much more error-prone than true components.
"Java objects that spit out HTML" sounds like a component to me. I mean, Wicket components are Java objects that spit out HTML, right? Again, you're free to write them yourself if you want but it's tough to justify when there are already a number of frameworks that have done most of the work for you.
hmmm... if anywhere close to half of the people that use Wicket dislike it, it seems like at least a few of them would have related the experience on a blog or something. And certainly such a horrible ratio of like/dislike would be evident on the user list in the form of a lot of angry, dissatisfied people. Instead, just about everyone who's used it raves about it and the (very busy) Wicket user list has more than the usual amount of praise for the framework. If I had to guess, I would say it's more like 95/5 like to dislike. In fact, one of the strongest arguments for Wicket is the nearly unanimous enthusiasm for the framework by those who use it.
Why should some guy in Alaska *not* take advantage of the technology available to him? Why do you seem to have such a problem with what someone *else* is doing? Are you being harmed in some way by his actions? Are his actions immoral?
If your objection to his pursuit of entertainment is rooted in some kind of facist belief that no one should ever break any law for any reason, then of course I would have to ask how may laws you yourself have broken. Ever broken the speed limit because you were in a hurry? If so, what gives you the right to decide what laws to follow based solely on your desires and your personal priorities? I suggest you take a long look in the mirror before taking such a patronizing tone with others.
First, I need to apologize for calling you a "troll" in an earlier post. It sounds like you just have a very different view of things, and that of course doesn't give me the right to insult you.
I'll just say that your criticisms of Wicket are so entirely opposite of my experience with the framework that it's frustrating and somewhat confusing to read your posts.
So you do seem to be advocating the "write your own framework" approach, which I've already addressed to a certain degree. I'll add/reiterate that it amounts to reinventing the wheel for every web application you write, runs completely counter to the concepts of code reuse and modularity and, in short, is almost always the wrong choice for a large-scale application when there are so many good Java frameworks to choose from.
You talk about "sacrificing the ability to adjust HTML and CSS and Javascript in TEXT on the alter of Objects" but, again, I find myself agreeing with your point but failing to see how it applies to Wicket. Wicket doesn't interfere with your use of plain HTML and CSS. This is one of its advantages.
You mentioned a "mental gap" in an earlier post and I honestly think that's why you see Wicket as getting in the way of, rather than augmenting, improving and accelerating your web programming. Some people look at a web page and see a big linear string of text. I see a concentric arrangement of components (whether I'm using PHP, Java or whatever -- it's always been that way). Some people find that OO concepts fit most of their programming problems really well while others see it as overkill.
Wicket is simply not intended for programmers who don't "get" or like component-oriented, heavily OO frameworks. It's at the opposite end of the spectrum and the documentation, etc. makes this pretty clear. So I can't help but wonder why you ever used it in the first place and what exactly you expected to get out of it when it clearly doesn't fit your preferred, procedural way of working.
I felt the same way about GWT -- it's just too much of a black box for my taste. Having said that, it's probably a good idea to reevaluate it now that I use a lot more Ajax and am far more comfortable with JavaScript than I was a year or so ago.
Regarding Wicket, however, I couldn't disagree more. I think Wicket offers by far the best balance of productivity and maintainability compared to any action or component-based Java web framework out there. There are, however, a couple of caveats.
1) Wicket's sweet spot is complex applications (esp. with a lot of Ajax) that *happen* to be served over http. iow, it's probably not a great fit for simple, high-volume public sites (although Wicket devs may disagree by pointing out some of the new features in 1.3 that offer excellent support for stateless pages).
2) You won't like Wicket if any time you see a decorator or composite pattern you either a) don't recognize it or b) refer to it as an "over-engineered" solution. Of course, if that's the case, you probably shouldn't be using Java in the first place.
In general, if you enjoy programming in Java and you like the idea of writing web UI code in more or less the same way you write domain code, you'll probably prefer Wicket to just about any other framework. To back that statement up a bit, I'll mention that *all* of the programmers on my team now write Wicket UI code as well as middle tier code even though some of them have never written a web app before in their life. That was not the case when we used Tapestry because, as nice as that framework is, you still have to think in terms of the request/response cycle to do anything complex and you have to learn a lot about it by rote, as opposed to Wicket where you can learn most of the framework simply by exploring it from within your IDE.
Sure, the "purity" of GWT's approach is undeniably appealing, but I'm reluctant to give up the simplicity of HTML templates, regular Java code that runs on a real JVM, and regular, non-generated JavaScript. As far as being irritated by having to keep your ultra-simple Wicket HTML templates in sync with your straightforward, plain Java code, I'll just say that it's much better than having to keep templates with embedded logic in sync with an abstract, runtime enhanced class along with a bunch of XML configuration. So, coming from Tapestry 4, code/template synchronization in Wicket has been a complete non-issue for me.
I'm not sure if you're advocating the abandonment of all web frameworks or if you just don't see the advantage of a component-based framework as opposed to an action-based framework. The problem with a "bare-bones, no framework" approach is that it usually translates into a custom framework for each application and/or a big mess of copy-and-paste spaghetti code that can only be deciphered by the original author.
The advantage of component-based frameworks is that components naturally correspond to objects whereas action-based frameworks lend themselves to a more procedural approach. I also think that web pages themselves make more sense when viewed as a collection of potentially reusable components (even when I wrote PHP apps, I wrote them in a component-oriented style), but I guess that's a matter of opinion.
Regarding that last statement about "writing HTML in HTML and writing Javascript in Javascript", I would just add "writing Java in Java" and point out
That list of commands -- while trivial -- is actually more work than right-clicking my project in Eclipse and selecting Team->Share Project. So, I think the "ease of use" argument works in Subversion's favor until Git has better IDE support.
Well, you got me. I'm actually a deacon in the Church of AGW. We were trying to keep the existence of the church under wraps for the time being, attempting to disseminate our scriptures in the form of "scientific evidence", but you're obviously way too smart to fall for that. So there you go. Your paranoid delusion of a pseudo-religious worldwide conspiracy to scam the human race into developing cleaner forms of energy is, in fact, true.
Obviously, you are the one engaging in religious conviction because you choose to ignore the opinion of the vast majority of scientists involved in climate change research. You are the church in this not-very-useful religious analogy of yours, with your head buried in the sand and unwilling to accept the data.
To give you a little bit of perspective on just how far out of the scientific mainstream your religious beliefs are, even Fox News considers you to be part of a fringe group of man-made climate change deniers. Once we start to feel the effects of climate change in more obvious and profound ways, I'm sure "fringe group" will be substituted with "cult".
Good luck with your prayers.
Yeah, let's hope for that. In fact, what we really need is less of this annoying scientific data proving that humans are causing unprecedented global warming, and more hope! Some kind of future technology will surely come along to save us, right? It happens in the movies all the time so why not?
I, like you, have complete faith that someone, somewhere will eventually figure out what's going on and what to do about it. Either that or we'll get really lucky.
In any event, I'm sure there's nothing to worry about. I've decided to take what's known in the scientific community as a "wait-and-see" attitude. I'm going to wait until I personally see a lot of people actually dying from global warming before I do anything.
Possibly, but not half as crazy as the anti-environmentalists that bring up the straw man of economic disaster as a reason to take a "wait and see" approach towards climate change. One primary flaw in your "argument" is that you assume switching to clean energy technologies is a cost when, in fact, it represents an economic opportunity. Lots of new jobs, a re-invigoration of competition in the energy sector, etc. Another flaw is the implication that there is some other, unspecified, option for the human race that doesn't involve switching from fossil energy to a radically different energy source. Even if global warming is not caused/accelerated by the burning of fossil fuels, we still have to find a new energy source because fossil fuel is only a short-term solution to our energy needs at this point.
So, to use the number in your analogy, let's say there's a 50% chance that the pollution from fossil fuel is a major contributor to global warming or otherwise dangerous climate change (btw, 50% might have been a reasonable number 10 years or so ago, but now it just makes you look an anti-environmentalist nut job). OK, so we have to fundamentally transform the world's energy supply over the next few decades regardless of environmental considerations. So, gee, why not nip this climate change thing in the bud at the same time, or, at least eliminate the strong probability of our contribution to it?
The arguments against a switch to clean energy just become increasingly feeble, desperate and crazy with each passing day.
On the one hand, you have an old, corrupt fool who doesn't even understand what the word "internet" means and on the other hand you have a guy who may reasonably be called one of the most visionary mainstream politicians of our time, given his proactive, leading-edge involvement in both the internet and environmental issues.
Thanks for getting that infamous Gore quote straight. Here's a little more info from Snopes:
I think the worst you can say about Gore's involvement with the internet is that he played an instrumental role in transforming it from an academic/military tool into the thing that you and I are arguing on right now. However you want to describe it, it's no small accomplishment.
Now compare that to Ted Stevens' accomplishments. ...chirp... ...chirp... ...chirp...
By the way, since Gore was "involved in plenty of scandals", you should have no problem citing them and recounting whether or not he was vindicated.Here's another fun comparison:
The Tesla costs $98,000, does 0-60 in 4 seconds, has a curb weight of 2500 lbs, gets the equivalent of roughly 135 mpg and is a *zero-emissions vehicle*
The 2007 Porsche 911 GT3 RS costs $123,000, also does 0-60 in 4 seconds, has a curb weight of 3030 lbs, gets about 20 mpg and emits all the usual pollutants.
So for $35,000 less, the Tesla outperforms the GT3 RS (due to the drastically lower curb weight), gets about 7 times better "gas mileage", is far more reliable (due to the simplicity of an electric motor vs. an ICE), can be recharged at home in about 3.5 hours, is far more environmentally friendly, and helps to reduce our dependancy on foreign oil.
As far as resale value is concerned, the 911 will rapidly decrease in value as it reaches 100K miles (since an ICE and conventional transmission will eventually require a full rebuild or replacement). The Tesla, OTOH, requires a new battery pack every 100K miles, but is otherwise good to go for much longer than the Porsche without major problems. So I would expect the resale value to hold up just fine.
hmmm.... decisions decisions....
Now, the above comparison is totally arbitrary as I'm selectively highlighting certain features of these two vehicles and ignoring others, just as you did. I picked the Porsche based on the same criteria you used (similar 0-60 drag time). I could have compared the Tesla to a number of Ferrari's or Lamborgini's, which would have made the Tesla look like a supercar-killer that just happens to be a ZEV.
What's important about the Tesla is that it proves that a practical (i.e. street-legal, decent range, quick recharge time, reliable, etc.) and insanely high-performance 100% electric vehicle can be built *today* that can actually compete in the auto enthusiast market. This is an incredible achievement with far-reaching implications and it's a shame if you can't see that.
I also have to mention that you are definitely not in the target market for a Tesla roadster, so your evaluation of the car needs to be seen in that light. If you were in the target market, you would have known enough to compare the Tesla with a similarly performing car instead of the Z06. The most obvious example would be the Lotus Elise (or the Exige) upon which it is based and, believe me, there simply aren't many (if any) potential sports car buyers out there losing sleep trying to decide between a Z06 and an Elise. They are almost at opposite ends of the performance spectrum.
No, what they did poorly was their job as problem solvers. They made the classic mistake of trying to solve a problem in reverse -- they started out with an assumption and then looked for evidence to support that assumption. For whatever reason, they wanted to rule out Cisco as the cause, so they did. This prevented them from finding the real cause as quickly as they might have.
Had they kept an open mind, they would have looked for more evidence before making a determination. For example, they could have asked some other universities (who undoubtedly now have iPhones on their wireless networks) whether or not the same type of problem was occurring there. With the answer being "no", they would have learned that the problem must have something to do with the combination of the iPhone and their specific network. That would have opened the doors to start looking at network configuration and/or faulty networking equipment. Obviously, that's exactly what happened in the end, but my point is that they erected a barrier in the problem solving process by "trusting" their Cisco equipment rather than suspecting it along with everything else.
I don't think the Duke IT people are incompetent, unintelligent, lacking in education, etc. Rather, I think this is an interesting little case study that illustrates how even highly competent people can allow their preconceptions to undermine their problem solving efforts. After all, our instincts, gut reactions, feelings, etc. are extremely useful when diagnosing a problem. They are often correct or at least highly informed on a level that is difficult to quantify. So, it's not easy to consider that your instincts may be completely wrong -- that you may be looking at an entirely new and surprising situation in which your instincts only serve to mislead you. Effective problem solving requires creativity, deliberate role-playing (e.g. "playing devil's advocate") and a certain amount of (forced) objectivity. Unfortunately, too few technical professionals display these traits when attempting to diagnose a problem and fail to understand that problem solving, in a general sense, is a discipline unto itself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Portable
http://www.bizwaremagic.com/notebook-computer-his
hmm... the HP LaserJet was available in 1984 and Ventura Publisher came out in 1986 -- a lot of businesses were definitely using PC's for typesetting from the mid to late eighties. It just wasn't quite as cut and dried as you suggest.
This was reported on MacRumors on Monday.
As a previous poster said, if that $90 in 2-3 years is a deal-breaker, you shouldn't buy an iPhone in the first place. Of course, by the time you actually need to replace the battery, Apple's price will have gone down and/or cheaper 3rd party replacements will be available.
Also, it would appear that Apple is using a high-end (and therefore expensive) battery in these things. All of the reviews confirm an extremely long battery life. So, I'm not sure that $90 including labor and shipping represents price-gouging at all (I guess that's the charge being made in this story, since it's never been a secret that the iPhone battery is not user-replaceable).
I think chimpanzees, apes, dolphins and other intelligent animals most certainly do "dream of greatness" in their own way. Of course, I'm just guessing, but so are you.
After all, we were told for many years that humans are special because we have language. Then, when it was irrefutably proven that other animals have the power of language, it was said that humans are special because we use tools. Now that we have quite a bit of footage of primates actually building -- not just using -- tools I haven't heard anyone trying to claim that humans are different than animals in any particular way, until now.
I think it's safe to assume that your baseless claim is just as false as all the others and when we can reliably read the minds of animals people like yourself will very surprised to find that they are not quite as special as they had hoped to believe.
So your argument is that because people tend to be egocentric, we aren't causing global warming? It's tough to even respond to that kind of tautological, backwards "wisdom", but I'll give it a shot.
First, your argument easily works both ways regarding climate change. It is incredibly egocentric to believe that we bear no responsibility for the effect our actions have on the environment. Rather than causing us to be overly concerned for the environment, it's far more likely that our self-centered psychological predispositions would lead us to damage it, just as a sociopath is not aware of or concerned with the effects his actions have on the environment around him.
Second, your assertion that "to think that a species that is outweighed by certain insect species could change the global climate of a planet is just silly" is, well, just silly. For example, if we detonated the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal tomorrow, it would surely have an immediate, quite noticeable and most likely devastating effect on the climate. This simple observation should put to rest your deeply flawed belief that we have no more power over our environment than insects. I could cite an almost endless number of other examples of how humans can and do transform the environment in far more profound ways than any insect species. Here are a few: cities, agricultural land transformation; clear cutting of forests; dams and reservoirs; dumps and landfills; draining of wetlands; commercial fishing and, to bring it back on topic, the emission of billions of metric tons of pollutants into the air every year. Please list the insect activities that have an equal impact on the enviroment.
Third, you fail to cite even one *fact* to support your starry-eyed claim that humans cannot alter the climate even though nearly the entire scientific community disagrees with you. Instead, you seem to think that your tired platitudes about the sun revolving around the earth are more enlightened than the well-researched conclusions of people who actually study this subject for a living. Talk about egocentric...
The only database-related issue that would make using OS X as a dev environment inconvenient would be the need to run MS SQL Server locally. Just about any other database runs fine on OS X and there are several commercial ODBC vendors as well as a free option.
Absolutely. It's the lack of Exchange integration that keeps Macs out of most offices. Apple's upcoming open source calendar server might change that. If Apple can make a compelling case for replacing Exchange with iCal Server in an all-Windows environment, then the door starts to open for Macs on the corporate desktop.
Go straight to Objective C on OS X. Apple's development tools (e.g. XCode with Interface Builder, free) make it pretty easy to get started and the language is well established so you can find books, etc. More importantly, you'll be programming in an environment with first-rate multimedia support.
Astounding -- you knowingly expose your employer to legal liability by violating software licenses *and* you're a programmer? Did the whole "Free Software" thing that comes up on Slashdot every once in a while just sail right over your head or what?
You are in a much smaller minority than you apparently think. Between the habitually law-abiding, the regular folk who value their paychecks, and those of us who actively advocate Free Software, no programmer I know would use any software in their company's products or services without researching the license, much less intentionally violate a license.