How do you plan to apply your little algorithm efficiently and economically to hundreds of thousands simultaneous connections? How do you efficiently and economically determine the average bandwidth instead of peak bandwidth of each connection? Do you want to allow a heavy user to utilize all available bandwidth when no one else is on the network at the moment? It's not as simple as you first thought, and Linux is not the answer to every question.
You can comprimise on quality when you're making an accounting system for the corner grocer. You cannot when you are making software that entire industries will rely on.
Are you sure your software is so important when it is used by a big corporation or government? How about those CEO's and board of directors who ran companies into ground? Aren't they more important than your software? Can you tell how many crooked decision makers are out there running the business world and the government? If you can live with them, then don't be so harsh on a few bugs left by your fellow software engineers. Unless you subconciously feel threatened by those software developers who don't do things your way.
but it is also clear that Microsoft started as a company that placed marketing before technical quality, and this mentality has never really been eliminated.
Because there is nothing wrong with it. Just because you are a good software designer doesn't mean elegant design is the most important thing in the world.
I'm a good software designer too. I used to work my butt off to produce layered, object-oriented, efficient, easily maintained, bug-free code. But after failure of three companies (big and small) and all those hard work turned into meaningless, worthless code, I realized how right Microsoft's mentality is. Having users complain about your software is the most effective way to find out that your software is actually needed. If a piece of software is truly useful, users will tolerate its bugs and other problems. Here I am talking about the business environment where a company simply dies if it can't make enough money quickly to cover its cost. If you have a more secured position where you can show off your geek talents without worrying about running out of money, then
you are just lucky. But consider yourself exception instead of the norm in the real world.
MITH#1 open source is comminust
I cant tel you how many times I've herd this. That's crap.
Open Source is to share source code among all users and developers.
Communism is to share all resources among all community members.
I'm not sure about you but I can definitely see similarity here.
You want example, here is a couple:
I'm a C++ developer. I worked on both Windows and Linux. In Windows, the C++ catch statement can catch both programming language exceptions and system exceptions. But in Linux, the same statement can only catch programming language exceptions. You need to resort to UNIX signal handling to catch OS exceptions. This is a system level function. If you have any real-world programming experience in C++, you will know that catching exception is very critical and used extensively. The Windows unified exception handling capability is extremely powerful. Here is another system level example. All server application must wait for multiple events when it is idle. The Windows system level functions can wait for a set of any kernel objects in a single wait statement, while the UNIX system level API wait functions can only wait for one type of objects. Again the unified approach greatly simplified system programmer's job. In both cases, the Linux programmer can manage to achieve similar results, but the Windows way is superior.
If what the article claimed is true, then communism whould have triumphed over capitalism. Since I witnessed firsthand how communism failed, I wouldn't be so sure about the future of OSS. For starter, whenever anything is truly successful, no matter what its original intentions were, money and power will sure to come to join and then dominate the party. Just see how happy the slashdotters became when IBM threw its weight behind Linux. People will always be corruped by money and power, geeks included.
Don't tell me open source softwares are always bug-free. If an open source voting software has a glitch during an election, it will cause as much panic as a closed source solution. The vast majority of software bugs are not planted by malicious software engineers, they are caused by oversights on behalf of human designers, engineers, and testers. Open source softwares are still developed by humans, hence will contain mistakes.
I'm not against open source, but I'm turned off by the arrogant attitude of some open source zealots.
>> It's disingenous to include "CEO's of
>> underperforming companies" when you can't
>> include the man who's in charge of software
>> technology for Microsoft and the whole thing
>> is riddled with security issues. I'd say he's
>> being paid a bit too much with that track
>> record.
I don't agree. Bill Gates's job is to make his company profitable, not making bullet-proof software. Remember making money is the #1 job of any executive of any for-profit company. If you don't like this then you should question the foundation of the entire capitalist world. I think the real reason that Bill Gates is hated by so many people is that he has been so successful at doing his job while the vast majority of people couldn't.
As an Chinese living in the Western Culture for the past 10 years. I can testify that there are major differences between the two cultures. But I'm not convinced that Western culture is inherently better.
In fact, I argue that the Western culture was able to take full advantage of science and technology because their societies evolved slower than the Chinese society.
It is a well known fact in China that one of the major reasons China lagged behind Western societies in terms of science and technology in the past 300 years because the brightest people in the society were only encouraged to become managers of the country for the past 2000 years. Engineers were considered managers' tools and were looked down upon. Chronic lack of talented scientists and engineers eventually made China pay the price of defeat and humiliation in the hands of Western powers.
What I have observed in America is that engineers are tools of upper management, especially in big corporations. It is human nature to pursue the best position within your society even though in the long run the society will fail. Everyday in America, corporate politicians back-stab each other to fight for their next promotions until the company fall apart under external pressure. Because China has been highly institutionized for a long period of time, the entire Chinese society have developed a culture of only pursuing management career track and avoiding engineer career track at all cost. Can you say this is not happenning in America right now? America has only achieved world dominance in the past 100 years. To dominate the world, America has to remain a big institution as a country just like China did since 2000 years ago. In the long run, the smartest Americans will learn to avoid science and engineer career tracks and pursue corporate executives and governments officials positions just like Chinese did for thousands of years. So the only reason the Western culture is ahead of other cultures in science and technology is that it was much less organized until recently. And this culture will evolve into the Chinese culture as the American government maintains its world's most powerful institution status in the future.
FYI, ever since the Chinese were defeated by Western advanced technologies, its culture had made a 180 degree turn. Today all smart people are encouraged to pursue engineering degrees. Actually most top Chinese officials today graduated from engineering schools.
Slashdot Mirror
At least they didn't compare Linus to Karl Marx.
:-)
Your New Year's wish is granted.
Linus is Karl Marx reborn as a software engineer
How do you plan to apply your little algorithm efficiently and economically to hundreds of thousands simultaneous connections? How do you efficiently and economically determine the average bandwidth instead of peak bandwidth of each connection? Do you want to allow a heavy user to utilize all available bandwidth when no one else is on the network at the moment? It's not as simple as you first thought, and Linux is not the answer to every question.
You can comprimise on quality when you're making an accounting system for the corner grocer. You cannot when you are making software that entire industries will rely on.
Are you sure your software is so important when it is used by a big corporation or government? How about those CEO's and board of directors who ran companies into ground? Aren't they more important than your software? Can you tell how many crooked decision makers are out there running the business world and the government? If you can live with them, then don't be so harsh on a few bugs left by your fellow software engineers. Unless you subconciously feel threatened by those software developers who don't do things your way.
but it is also clear that Microsoft started as a company that placed marketing before technical quality, and this mentality has never really been eliminated.
Because there is nothing wrong with it. Just because you are a good software designer doesn't mean elegant design is the most important thing in the world.
I'm a good software designer too. I used to work my butt off to produce layered, object-oriented, efficient, easily maintained, bug-free code. But after failure of three companies (big and small) and all those hard work turned into meaningless, worthless code, I realized how right Microsoft's mentality is. Having users complain about your software is the most effective way to find out that your software is actually needed. If a piece of software is truly useful, users will tolerate its bugs and other problems. Here I am talking about the business environment where a company simply dies if it can't make enough money quickly to cover its cost. If you have a more secured position where you can show off your geek talents without worrying about running out of money, then you are just lucky. But consider yourself exception instead of the norm in the real world.
Great point. Paperless voting means less paper. Which northern country exports a lot of tree pulp?
MITH#1 open source is comminust
I cant tel you how many times I've herd this. That's crap. Open Source is to share source code among all users and developers.
Communism is to share all resources among all community members.
I'm not sure about you but I can definitely see similarity here.
Not according to a lot of slashdotters. Linux is supposed to be on a higher plane than Windows.
You want example, here is a couple: I'm a C++ developer. I worked on both Windows and Linux. In Windows, the C++ catch statement can catch both programming language exceptions and system exceptions. But in Linux, the same statement can only catch programming language exceptions. You need to resort to UNIX signal handling to catch OS exceptions. This is a system level function. If you have any real-world programming experience in C++, you will know that catching exception is very critical and used extensively. The Windows unified exception handling capability is extremely powerful. Here is another system level example. All server application must wait for multiple events when it is idle. The Windows system level functions can wait for a set of any kernel objects in a single wait statement, while the UNIX system level API wait functions can only wait for one type of objects. Again the unified approach greatly simplified system programmer's job. In both cases, the Linux programmer can manage to achieve similar results, but the Windows way is superior.
If what the article claimed is true, then communism whould have triumphed over capitalism. Since I witnessed firsthand how communism failed, I wouldn't be so sure about the future of OSS. For starter, whenever anything is truly successful, no matter what its original intentions were, money and power will sure to come to join and then dominate the party. Just see how happy the slashdotters became when IBM threw its weight behind Linux. People will always be corruped by money and power, geeks included.
A C pointer will grow from 32-bit to 64-bit. This will wreak havoc in most non-trivial C/C++ apps.
How can a company without a decent webserver compete against M$?
Don't tell me open source softwares are always bug-free. If an open source voting software has a glitch during an election, it will cause as much panic as a closed source solution. The vast majority of software bugs are not planted by malicious software engineers, they are caused by oversights on behalf of human designers, engineers, and testers. Open source softwares are still developed by humans, hence will contain mistakes. I'm not against open source, but I'm turned off by the arrogant attitude of some open source zealots.
>> It's disingenous to include "CEO's of >> underperforming companies" when you can't >> include the man who's in charge of software >> technology for Microsoft and the whole thing >> is riddled with security issues. I'd say he's >> being paid a bit too much with that track >> record. I don't agree. Bill Gates's job is to make his company profitable, not making bullet-proof software. Remember making money is the #1 job of any executive of any for-profit company. If you don't like this then you should question the foundation of the entire capitalist world. I think the real reason that Bill Gates is hated by so many people is that he has been so successful at doing his job while the vast majority of people couldn't.
As an Chinese living in the Western Culture for the past 10 years. I can testify that there are major differences between the two cultures. But I'm not convinced that Western culture is inherently better. In fact, I argue that the Western culture was able to take full advantage of science and technology because their societies evolved slower than the Chinese society. It is a well known fact in China that one of the major reasons China lagged behind Western societies in terms of science and technology in the past 300 years because the brightest people in the society were only encouraged to become managers of the country for the past 2000 years. Engineers were considered managers' tools and were looked down upon. Chronic lack of talented scientists and engineers eventually made China pay the price of defeat and humiliation in the hands of Western powers. What I have observed in America is that engineers are tools of upper management, especially in big corporations. It is human nature to pursue the best position within your society even though in the long run the society will fail. Everyday in America, corporate politicians back-stab each other to fight for their next promotions until the company fall apart under external pressure. Because China has been highly institutionized for a long period of time, the entire Chinese society have developed a culture of only pursuing management career track and avoiding engineer career track at all cost. Can you say this is not happenning in America right now? America has only achieved world dominance in the past 100 years. To dominate the world, America has to remain a big institution as a country just like China did since 2000 years ago. In the long run, the smartest Americans will learn to avoid science and engineer career tracks and pursue corporate executives and governments officials positions just like Chinese did for thousands of years. So the only reason the Western culture is ahead of other cultures in science and technology is that it was much less organized until recently. And this culture will evolve into the Chinese culture as the American government maintains its world's most powerful institution status in the future. FYI, ever since the Chinese were defeated by Western advanced technologies, its culture had made a 180 degree turn. Today all smart people are encouraged to pursue engineering degrees. Actually most top Chinese officials today graduated from engineering schools.