To play devil's advocate, I think what they're worried about is another J++, where someone (Microsoft) creates an almost-but-not-quite Java, and then you end up with "write once run nowhere else". I don't necessarily agree with that worry, but I strongly suspect that's what's in Sun's head.
The closer to the fringe one is, the louder the cries of anguish.
During the Clinton era, a few fringoids to the far right kept predicting dire events. But they didn't happen. We got throught it just fine. We'll get through the Bush years just fine as well. Despite claims that we have lost our civil rights, our freedoms of speech and press are fully intact.
I graduated from university in the middle of the Reagan years. My commencement speaker was a famous 60's radical. He told us (in a ninety minute speech that put most people to sleep), that we would all die because of Reagan. Literally. Aids, racism, the draft, pollution, nuclear war, poverty, etc, etc. Guess what? The world didn't end!
In theory, yes. But in practice it has never happened. A group might rise to take over the government, but then it would be the government itself that is filling the gap. Every instance of oppression in history had a government behind it, either as the oppressors or as active accomplices to the oppressors. Despite Hollywood movie plots to the contrary, there has never been an instance of big business enslaving, subjugating or terrorizing a group of people without first getting active support or special privileges from the government.
The comparisons between Bush and Hitler are so numerous only a rabid wingnut in the employ of Karl Rove could deny them. For example, both Bush's and Hitler's fathers hated brocolli!
WTF? Please examine the ratio of judges to Supreme Court nominations. You're stark raving loopy if you think judges take the odds of a SCOTUS nomination into their career plans.
The fact remains that no weak government has ever been oppressive. The problem is not whether governments are "good" or "evil", but whether they are too strong to be reigned in by their people. Case in point, the last dozen years. While Clinton was in office, not one liberal challenged the increase in the scope of the federal government. But once Bush got in office, suddenly they all freaked out in realization that government had too much power, and too much of it was centralized in the federal government. Well duh!
We need Open Source drivers! I don't mind closed proprietary stuff at the application level, but I demand at it in the infrastructure. When I buy a piece of hardware with my hard earned money, even a video card, I expect to be the full owner of that hardware. I don't want it beholden to NVidia or ATI. If they want to tell me what software I can run on my hardware, then can damned well fork over part of the purchase price for it!
I've had a new laptop for four weeks now. I put on Kubuntu because ATI "supports" the video (X1400) with a native Linux driver. Today I gave up and installed FreeBSD. I've spent four weekends too many trying to get it to work. For a TFT display, the vesa driver is more than acceptable, and I might as well be using it on an OS I'm familiar with, instead of figuring out a new one. I don't get to play fancy 3D games, but who the fsck cares? This is a work machine! (On the upside, FreeBSD supports the wifi card in the laptop while Linux doesn't).
Frameworks do let you create faster, but they are not considered RADs, unless also bundled with drag-n-drop snap-together interfaces. For example, Qt is a framework, while Kylix is a RAD.
Wrong. Your pre-pre-pre-alpha prototype is supposed to be a tested and solid project. Instead of cramming half implemented features in and having a constantly broken system, you implement a few features well. The customer doesn't need to see a prototype of everything in the first go around.
Dear customer, here is your new 1.0 word processor. It inserts text, but you need to wait until version 2.0 to delete text. We are billing your account $495 dollars, and imposing our EULA on you. Have a nice day.
The problem is, you're still shipping a pre-pre-pre-alpha prototype. Then charging the customer for a pre-pre-beta 2.0 version. Then charging them again for an incredibly buggy 3.0 release candidate. And so on.
Cyclic software lifecycles have been around for a couple of decades, but only recently have we given them cool names and used them as an excuse to release unfinished (and untested) software. The problem with modern software development is that we've lost all sense of pride and craftsmanship.
I think that the software development community would be better served by discussions of how to build more robust, flexible, and maintainable software (thereby driving down TCO), than by the endless discussions that we currently see about how to build it quickly. What do you think?
As someone who started his professional development life maintaining other people's code, I completely agree.
But I must take issue with the title of this thread. The problem isn't too much focus on the beginning of the software lifecycle. Coding is in the middle, not the beginning. A good design comes first, and a good analysis of the problem domain before that. Modern methodologies ignore design, or pretend to do during coding. A quick and dirty hack may come back to bite the heel of a future maintainer, but a hurried design is sure to smother him to death. Way too much emphasis is made on coding, but that's only 10% to 20% of the lifecycle (not counting maintenance).
We're not developing faster, we're just shipping more prototypes.
Nonsense. Sharecropping- the result of racism, not capitalism; Prostitution- an illegal occupation in most jurisdictions; desktop systems- the result of grants of privilege by the government (ei. copyright); energy markets- a micromanaged and overly regulated industry (the so-called "deregulation" was anything but); telecoms- the result of decades of government mandated monopolies.
Though this sounds like a bunch of excuses, it's because the present system in the US is NOT true capitalism, and it's participants are NOT wholly rational. But just because there is some grit in the rice, it does not follow that rice is inedible.
This is the logical step forward in a society that fully embraces capitalism. Copyrights have nothing whatsoever to do with capitalism. Please get a dictionary and look up the word. There are several meanings, but none imply that copyrights are a logical outgrowth.
Copyrights (and patents) are artificial privileges granted by government. This ruling is NOT the result of a system of free and voluntary economic transactions based on the ownership of capital, but based on a fictious definition of property and the adhoc legal system that supports it.
Capitalism has no mechanism for the distribution of wealth.
You are quite incorrect. It doesn't have a *coercive* mechanism for distributing wealth, but distributing wealth is one of the foundations of capitalism. The consumer transfers part of his wealth to the producer in exchange for goods, and the producer transfers part of his wealth to the employee in exchange for labor and skills, and the employee goes and buys a new computer, restarting the cycle.
Voluntary economic transactions increase the wealth of both parties. When you buy a bag of apples for one dollar, it is because you value the apples more than the dollar, and so you are wealthier. The seller values the dollar more than the apples, and so he is wealthier. It is not a zero sum game, you both end up wealthier.
My old company was that way. Our deadlines were given to us without consultation. Half of engineering's job was to figure out how to strip a project down to fit into the schedule. But each time we managed to do it we got a shorter schedule next time. The scheme finally blew up when we were given the ludicrous schedule (which we of course missed).
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one day wireless USB devices will really work with out-of-the-box Linux!
Yeah right. That will happen the day after video card manufacturers release Free Software drivers...
Just because all you have is a hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.
To play devil's advocate, I think what they're worried about is another J++, where someone (Microsoft) creates an almost-but-not-quite Java, and then you end up with "write once run nowhere else". I don't necessarily agree with that worry, but I strongly suspect that's what's in Sun's head.
Sounds good to me! I'm having problems figuring out the "problem" you refer to.
Then why don't the release specs to the stuff they aren't hostage to? We don't need the source code, just the specifications. Geez.
And next time, maybe they won't be so stupid as to sign an NDA on a freaking *specification*!
I'm glad it wasn't ATI who bought AMD, otherwise we would have to use buggy proprietary CPU drivers...
The closer to the fringe one is, the louder the cries of anguish.
During the Clinton era, a few fringoids to the far right kept predicting dire events. But they didn't happen. We got throught it just fine. We'll get through the Bush years just fine as well. Despite claims that we have lost our civil rights, our freedoms of speech and press are fully intact.
I graduated from university in the middle of the Reagan years. My commencement speaker was a famous 60's radical. He told us (in a ninety minute speech that put most people to sleep), that we would all die because of Reagan. Literally. Aids, racism, the draft, pollution, nuclear war, poverty, etc, etc. Guess what? The world didn't end!
In theory, yes. But in practice it has never happened. A group might rise to take over the government, but then it would be the government itself that is filling the gap. Every instance of oppression in history had a government behind it, either as the oppressors or as active accomplices to the oppressors. Despite Hollywood movie plots to the contrary, there has never been an instance of big business enslaving, subjugating or terrorizing a group of people without first getting active support or special privileges from the government.
The comparisons between Bush and Hitler are so numerous only a rabid wingnut in the employ of Karl Rove could deny them. For example, both Bush's and Hitler's fathers hated brocolli!
WTF? Please examine the ratio of judges to Supreme Court nominations. You're stark raving loopy if you think judges take the odds of a SCOTUS nomination into their career plans.
The fact remains that no weak government has ever been oppressive. The problem is not whether governments are "good" or "evil", but whether they are too strong to be reigned in by their people. Case in point, the last dozen years. While Clinton was in office, not one liberal challenged the increase in the scope of the federal government. But once Bush got in office, suddenly they all freaked out in realization that government had too much power, and too much of it was centralized in the federal government. Well duh!
Professionals use professional translation services. 'Nuff said.
We need Open Source drivers! I don't mind closed proprietary stuff at the application level, but I demand at it in the infrastructure. When I buy a piece of hardware with my hard earned money, even a video card, I expect to be the full owner of that hardware. I don't want it beholden to NVidia or ATI. If they want to tell me what software I can run on my hardware, then can damned well fork over part of the purchase price for it!
I've had a new laptop for four weeks now. I put on Kubuntu because ATI "supports" the video (X1400) with a native Linux driver. Today I gave up and installed FreeBSD. I've spent four weekends too many trying to get it to work. For a TFT display, the vesa driver is more than acceptable, and I might as well be using it on an OS I'm familiar with, instead of figuring out a new one. I don't get to play fancy 3D games, but who the fsck cares? This is a work machine! (On the upside, FreeBSD supports the wifi card in the laptop while Linux doesn't).
Frameworks do let you create faster, but they are not considered RADs, unless also bundled with drag-n-drop snap-together interfaces. For example, Qt is a framework, while Kylix is a RAD.
Wrong. Your pre-pre-pre-alpha prototype is supposed to be a tested and solid project. Instead of cramming half implemented features in and having a constantly broken system, you implement a few features well. The customer doesn't need to see a prototype of everything in the first go around.
Dear customer, here is your new 1.0 word processor. It inserts text, but you need to wait until version 2.0 to delete text. We are billing your account $495 dollars, and imposing our EULA on you. Have a nice day.
You're not describing RADs, you're describing frameworks.
The problem is, you're still shipping a pre-pre-pre-alpha prototype. Then charging the customer for a pre-pre-beta 2.0 version. Then charging them again for an incredibly buggy 3.0 release candidate. And so on.
Cyclic software lifecycles have been around for a couple of decades, but only recently have we given them cool names and used them as an excuse to release unfinished (and untested) software. The problem with modern software development is that we've lost all sense of pride and craftsmanship.
I think that the software development community would be better served by discussions of how to build more robust, flexible, and maintainable software (thereby driving down TCO), than by the endless discussions that we currently see about how to build it quickly. What do you think?
As someone who started his professional development life maintaining other people's code, I completely agree.
But I must take issue with the title of this thread. The problem isn't too much focus on the beginning of the software lifecycle. Coding is in the middle, not the beginning. A good design comes first, and a good analysis of the problem domain before that. Modern methodologies ignore design, or pretend to do during coding. A quick and dirty hack may come back to bite the heel of a future maintainer, but a hurried design is sure to smother him to death. Way too much emphasis is made on coding, but that's only 10% to 20% of the lifecycle (not counting maintenance).
We're not developing faster, we're just shipping more prototypes.
Nonsense. Sharecropping- the result of racism, not capitalism; Prostitution- an illegal occupation in most jurisdictions; desktop systems- the result of grants of privilege by the government (ei. copyright); energy markets- a micromanaged and overly regulated industry (the so-called "deregulation" was anything but); telecoms- the result of decades of government mandated monopolies.
Though this sounds like a bunch of excuses, it's because the present system in the US is NOT true capitalism, and it's participants are NOT wholly rational. But just because there is some grit in the rice, it does not follow that rice is inedible.
I rented the first season of Deadwood from Cleanflix, and I thought the sound had gone out on my television!
This is the logical step forward in a society that fully embraces capitalism.
Copyrights have nothing whatsoever to do with capitalism. Please get a dictionary and look up the word. There are several meanings, but none imply that copyrights are a logical outgrowth.
Copyrights (and patents) are artificial privileges granted by government. This ruling is NOT the result of a system of free and voluntary economic transactions based on the ownership of capital, but based on a fictious definition of property and the adhoc legal system that supports it.
Capitalism has no mechanism for the distribution of wealth.
You are quite incorrect. It doesn't have a *coercive* mechanism for distributing wealth, but distributing wealth is one of the foundations of capitalism. The consumer transfers part of his wealth to the producer in exchange for goods, and the producer transfers part of his wealth to the employee in exchange for labor and skills, and the employee goes and buys a new computer, restarting the cycle.
Voluntary economic transactions increase the wealth of both parties. When you buy a bag of apples for one dollar, it is because you value the apples more than the dollar, and so you are wealthier. The seller values the dollar more than the apples, and so he is wealthier. It is not a zero sum game, you both end up wealthier.
1) Yes, of course. But on the other hand, homicide statistics ONLY count homicide (duh). Thus one is sampling a smaller subset than the other.
2) Comments are like assholes. Everyone has one and they all stink. So it really doesn't mean anything that the article had negative comments.
My old company was that way. Our deadlines were given to us without consultation. Half of engineering's job was to figure out how to strip a project down to fit into the schedule. But each time we managed to do it we got a shorter schedule next time. The scheme finally blew up when we were given the ludicrous schedule (which we of course missed).
1) Pair programming doesn't count for code reviews, because the "reviewer" is vested in the code.
2) If your code reviews end up being "slugfests" and nitpick sessions, then you're not running them right.