There's a lot of duct tape crap, I'll admit. But the current system has a lot of pretty solid ideas and systems that work well, too. For example, HTTP, and the general stateless nature of the web works great. Proxies, and caching, and other supporting technologies are actually pretty good or at least work really well.
Ajax sucks and is kludgey. But really I don't even notice, even though I code with it every day. That's because I've got it all abstracted away into super easy to use libraries. Lots of it is really lame, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest, because the tools I use (some I've created, some off the shelf) make it all a snap.
If we were to start from scratch the finished product might be simpler. But there's a real strong ecosystem of powerful tools and infrastructure all built around HTTP. Strange and cobbled together as it may look, it makes for a great foundation to build other things on.
So I wouldn't start from scratch. I'd start with what we've got and get a head start, and spend the extra brainpower or more worthwhile innovation.
Since the dawn of man, every UI innovation has been poo-poo'd by the old guard.
When GUI's came out, people said that it was faster to use old keypunch machines. And perhaps it was, at first, but the operators had to be much more skilled and took longer to train.
When browser-based apps came out, a lot of people said that we're all better off with thick client apps that can have a more responsive UI.
Flash and Javascript, people complain about their misuse. But how they're misused is missing the point compared to the good things they've done in changing the landscape of the web. Examples include Youtube, Google Maps. I realize a lot of people don't want to use Flash or Javascript at all, and that's cool with me. But such people are missing out.
There's a lot of 3D applications in our future. Virtual worlds, learning, exploring, sharing experiences together-- all of those things are best done in 3d. Looking at pictures of the Acropolis is one thing. But to really get a "feel" for it, for how big it is, for what it might have been like to be there, you really get more out of exploring a 3d model. Ideally with a guide or a friend.
There's real benefit in 3d, even though a lot of people won't see it. I won't deny that some applications of it will suck, especially at first. But long term, the web could become a fine standards compliant delivery mechanism for 3d apps.
I agreed with most of what you said, and thought it was spot on. But this one part really caught my eye:
The team with more money buying engine/weapon have advantage. Second, offense is a nightmare, without 18+ people you aren't going to do anything and the keep lord will slaughter your team.
In my experience, siege weapons don't really matter much one way or the other. Quite the opposite: it's really just about who has more people. So it's not skill or levels or equipment so much as who's zerg is bigger.
And regarding needing 18+ people to take a keep. I've taken keeps many times with 5 people (yes, in Tier 4). Once we took a keep with 5 people, against 2 player defenders.
But to me both these issues come down to "death by zerg." You really need to run in a big group to do well. The bigger the group, the better you'll do. Each side keeps bringing bigger zergs, which discourages the other side from operating in anything less than a big zerg. Zergs begat zergs. And personally running around in a massive group where anything I do doesn't really impact the outcome isn't very fun for me. So it ends up being a whole lotta suck.
On my PVR, I click "Find Shows", type the name of the show, select it, and click "Record this series". I don't even have to know when it airs; such details are left to the PVR. Either you need to get a PVR and try it, or perhaps I don't udnerstand your concern, or maybe your PVR is really terrible.
It's hilarious and informative to consider that even an idea wise and innocuous as "chill out and think twice before driving too fast" can be met with harsh criticism here on Slashdot. Some people you just can't please!
Use as a squid server would be somewhat limited, though, since it'd be a pretty small squid cache. But maybe it'd be great for just caching a couple of pages.
I am pretty sure that if you have never played some games, then you are not missing anything. Maybe your life revolves around games, but not everybody's.
Geez, lighten up a little, Scrooge. They just sais some flash games are fun. That's the whole point of flash games-- your world doesn't have to revolve around them to have fun. They're quick and dirty three minute affairs.
Here, this game will change your life, make you a better person. Try it. You'll love it. I can tell, because you're clearly such a fun and open-minded person.
You're totally, sadly, right. Our government isn't much more democratic than Russia's. People reading slashdot: if any of parent's statements resonate with you-- and especially if they dont-- read Manufactoring Consent by Noam Chomsky.
Python, Django. Ruby on rails is a bigger pleasure to work with, but more difficult to scale huge. Plus, there's attractive options such as hosting on Google App Engine.
I'm actually not so much a worshipper of Python. I actually like Ruby better, and Scala better than either one. I used to do a lot with C# and still love and miss it in some ways, and also like D. I'm not a worshipper of Python, bowing at its altar midlessly. And I also don't disagree with you much regarding Perl.
My personal preference for Python is a blend of my personal success with Python combined with the general direction the technical wind is blowing. A big part of a language's superiority has to do with the community, and whether the programmer's you're working with are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about it. That's why I use Python and not Ruby or Scala-- because of the people I'm working with.
And that's also a good reason to say that PHP blows: aside from its actual technical merits or shortcomings, most programmers worth their salt would really rather not be using PHP*.
* There are many very capable developers that still use PHP, and wouldn't change languages even given the opportunity to start a new project from scratch. Really smart, hard working people. And in 1992, I knew a bunch of really smart, hard working COBOL programmers, who would use COBOL for the next project just because it was the path of least resistance for them. These people, who go with what they know all the time, have arguably reached the high point in their technical capabilities.
Truth is, static verification is generally overrated. Static typing has its place, but its place is not "everywhere, all the time, in every app". This topic is hotly debated, but for me the proof is in getting the job done effectively and quickly.
If a program works, and does it without a lot of static typing and other mumbo jumbo, then so much the better.
This is exactly the kind of soothing mumbo-jumbo that losers use to keep themselves warm at night while their secret crushes are screwing assholes of "lower ability" on giant piles of sweaty $100 bills.
At least his mumbo jumbo made some sense. I think I'd need to study that sentence and maybe diagram it to figure out what you're trying to see.
Parent is right. It sounds daunting before you actually work with it all the time. But in practice, you set up your editor to do the right thing, and it's never a problem again for you except like once every few months.
You could also try manufacturing your own experience, independently. For example, I wanted to work on computer telephone integration. I didn't have any relevant experience. So I fired up asterisk, and wrote a telephone dating system using MySql, Asterisk, Mono, and C#. I chose those things because the company I wanted to work for used those things. It worked: when I went in to the interview, I was able to discuss my experience even though I hadn't worked for a company that did that stuff. I've done somilar things with other specializations with computers. You don't always have to have conventional experience in order to satisfy the interviewers. But the hard part is getting to the interview stage.
People that are serious about doing their work would far prefer being empowered to get what they need for themselves in a few minutes rather than waiting a few days for that single button push. And even the ones that don't want to wait, if I do it for them, it only takes a few minutes.
All very true. But what many IT people fail to see: the converse is also true. Many IT workers work in a dumb way that leads to more and more work. In more than one company I've worked, I've had a person leave, then I absorb their job, largely automate it/make most of the work go away and not really increase my workload. Then someone else leaves, and I repeat that process. One company I worked at, I absorbed/automated the jobs of 5 other people.
For example, one person did a lot of custom reports, worked that job full time 40 hours a week. When she left, I absorbed her job, designed and implemented 5 key reporting views, then trained the users how to do ad-hoc reporting on those views using Oracle Discoverer. Poof, all that was left of what she used to spend 40 hours a week on is 15 minutes a month of answering questions. A lot of IT workers make more work for themselves than is really necessary.
Of course, doing updates to live servers without care, testing and planning, can and does in a very real way lead to more urgent work and 80 hour work weeks.
I agree- I find FPS games to be too taxing also. You forgot to mention another category of games: MMO's, where the biggest challenge is dealing with the crushing boredom and sometimes overwhelming frustration. MMO's often feel that you need so many people to accomplish something that nobody really feels like they've accomplished anything.
No, not being sarcastic. Take it at face value. I've spent years writing code for.NET. This includes GUI's using Windows Forms, multi threaded server software for phone switches in C#, plus web code in ASP.NET. Generally, I think it's solid. The Windows Forms code blows the doors off of either Windows SDK or Java2 Swing. There's some low points in the.NET code, for sure. The sockets code in.NET for example is a little too low level, for example. But really, it's quite good overall.
Agreed. While OLE and the original Windows SDK sucked, that's ancient history. Focus on stuff from the last decade. The.NET API is excellent by and large.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember playing MidiMaze, a first person shooter, in the 80's.
I salute your friend. Of course, it's easier to just pirate the music.
There's a lot of duct tape crap, I'll admit. But the current system has a lot of pretty solid ideas and systems that work well, too. For example, HTTP, and the general stateless nature of the web works great. Proxies, and caching, and other supporting technologies are actually pretty good or at least work really well.
Ajax sucks and is kludgey. But really I don't even notice, even though I code with it every day. That's because I've got it all abstracted away into super easy to use libraries. Lots of it is really lame, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest, because the tools I use (some I've created, some off the shelf) make it all a snap.
If we were to start from scratch the finished product might be simpler. But there's a real strong ecosystem of powerful tools and infrastructure all built around HTTP. Strange and cobbled together as it may look, it makes for a great foundation to build other things on.
So I wouldn't start from scratch. I'd start with what we've got and get a head start, and spend the extra brainpower or more worthwhile innovation.
Since the dawn of man, every UI innovation has been poo-poo'd by the old guard.
When GUI's came out, people said that it was faster to use old keypunch machines. And perhaps it was, at first, but the operators had to be much more skilled and took longer to train.
When browser-based apps came out, a lot of people said that we're all better off with thick client apps that can have a more responsive UI.
Flash and Javascript, people complain about their misuse. But how they're misused is missing the point compared to the good things they've done in changing the landscape of the web. Examples include Youtube, Google Maps. I realize a lot of people don't want to use Flash or Javascript at all, and that's cool with me. But such people are missing out.
There's a lot of 3D applications in our future. Virtual worlds, learning, exploring, sharing experiences together-- all of those things are best done in 3d. Looking at pictures of the Acropolis is one thing. But to really get a "feel" for it, for how big it is, for what it might have been like to be there, you really get more out of exploring a 3d model. Ideally with a guide or a friend.
There's real benefit in 3d, even though a lot of people won't see it. I won't deny that some applications of it will suck, especially at first. But long term, the web could become a fine standards compliant delivery mechanism for 3d apps.
In my experience, siege weapons don't really matter much one way or the other. Quite the opposite: it's really just about who has more people. So it's not skill or levels or equipment so much as who's zerg is bigger.
And regarding needing 18+ people to take a keep. I've taken keeps many times with 5 people (yes, in Tier 4). Once we took a keep with 5 people, against 2 player defenders.
But to me both these issues come down to "death by zerg." You really need to run in a big group to do well. The bigger the group, the better you'll do. Each side keeps bringing bigger zergs, which discourages the other side from operating in anything less than a big zerg. Zergs begat zergs. And personally running around in a massive group where anything I do doesn't really impact the outcome isn't very fun for me. So it ends up being a whole lotta suck.
On my PVR, I click "Find Shows", type the name of the show, select it, and click "Record this series". I don't even have to know when it airs; such details are left to the PVR. Either you need to get a PVR and try it, or perhaps I don't udnerstand your concern, or maybe your PVR is really terrible.
It's hilarious and informative to consider that even an idea wise and innocuous as "chill out and think twice before driving too fast" can be met with harsh criticism here on Slashdot. Some people you just can't please!
Use as a squid server would be somewhat limited, though, since it'd be a pretty small squid cache. But maybe it'd be great for just caching a couple of pages.
Geez, lighten up a little, Scrooge. They just sais some flash games are fun. That's the whole point of flash games-- your world doesn't have to revolve around them to have fun. They're quick and dirty three minute affairs.
Here, this game will change your life, make you a better person. Try it. You'll love it. I can tell, because you're clearly such a fun and open-minded person.
You're totally, sadly, right. Our government isn't much more democratic than Russia's. People reading slashdot: if any of parent's statements resonate with you-- and especially if they dont-- read Manufactoring Consent by Noam Chomsky.
Python, Django. Ruby on rails is a bigger pleasure to work with, but more difficult to scale huge. Plus, there's attractive options such as hosting on Google App Engine.
What's you're saying is funny, but the general concept you're talking about has been discussed much in serious probability theory. See Pascal's Wager.
I'm actually not so much a worshipper of Python. I actually like Ruby better, and Scala better than either one. I used to do a lot with C# and still love and miss it in some ways, and also like D. I'm not a worshipper of Python, bowing at its altar midlessly. And I also don't disagree with you much regarding Perl.
My personal preference for Python is a blend of my personal success with Python combined with the general direction the technical wind is blowing. A big part of a language's superiority has to do with the community, and whether the programmer's you're working with are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about it. That's why I use Python and not Ruby or Scala-- because of the people I'm working with.
And that's also a good reason to say that PHP blows: aside from its actual technical merits or shortcomings, most programmers worth their salt would really rather not be using PHP*.
* There are many very capable developers that still use PHP, and wouldn't change languages even given the opportunity to start a new project from scratch. Really smart, hard working people. And in 1992, I knew a bunch of really smart, hard working COBOL programmers, who would use COBOL for the next project just because it was the path of least resistance for them. These people, who go with what they know all the time, have arguably reached the high point in their technical capabilities.
Truth is, static verification is generally overrated. Static typing has its place, but its place is not "everywhere, all the time, in every app". This topic is hotly debated, but for me the proof is in getting the job done effectively and quickly.
If a program works, and does it without a lot of static typing and other mumbo jumbo, then so much the better.
Both parent and grandparent are right. PHP has in fact worked great for many large scale development projects.
But at the same time, show me a large scale project done in PHP, and I'll show you a large scale project that would have been better off in Python.
This is exactly the kind of soothing mumbo-jumbo that losers use to keep themselves warm at night while their secret crushes are screwing assholes of "lower ability" on giant piles of sweaty $100 bills.
At least his mumbo jumbo made some sense. I think I'd need to study that sentence and maybe diagram it to figure out what you're trying to see.
Parent is right. It sounds daunting before you actually work with it all the time. But in practice, you set up your editor to do the right thing, and it's never a problem again for you except like once every few months.
You could also try manufacturing your own experience, independently. For example, I wanted to work on computer telephone integration. I didn't have any relevant experience. So I fired up asterisk, and wrote a telephone dating system using MySql, Asterisk, Mono, and C#. I chose those things because the company I wanted to work for used those things. It worked: when I went in to the interview, I was able to discuss my experience even though I hadn't worked for a company that did that stuff. I've done somilar things with other specializations with computers. You don't always have to have conventional experience in order to satisfy the interviewers. But the hard part is getting to the interview stage.
People that are serious about doing their work would far prefer being empowered to get what they need for themselves in a few minutes rather than waiting a few days for that single button push. And even the ones that don't want to wait, if I do it for them, it only takes a few minutes.
All very true. But what many IT people fail to see: the converse is also true. Many IT workers work in a dumb way that leads to more and more work. In more than one company I've worked, I've had a person leave, then I absorb their job, largely automate it/make most of the work go away and not really increase my workload. Then someone else leaves, and I repeat that process. One company I worked at, I absorbed/automated the jobs of 5 other people.
For example, one person did a lot of custom reports, worked that job full time 40 hours a week. When she left, I absorbed her job, designed and implemented 5 key reporting views, then trained the users how to do ad-hoc reporting on those views using Oracle Discoverer. Poof, all that was left of what she used to spend 40 hours a week on is 15 minutes a month of answering questions. A lot of IT workers make more work for themselves than is really necessary.
Of course, doing updates to live servers without care, testing and planning, can and does in a very real way lead to more urgent work and 80 hour work weeks.
I agree- I find FPS games to be too taxing also. You forgot to mention another category of games: MMO's, where the biggest challenge is dealing with the crushing boredom and sometimes overwhelming frustration. MMO's often feel that you need so many people to accomplish something that nobody really feels like they've accomplished anything.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say they probably coulda got a handfull of pretty good developers for mere hundreds of millions.
No, not being sarcastic. Take it at face value. I've spent years writing code for .NET. This includes GUI's using Windows Forms, multi threaded server software for phone switches in C#, plus web code in ASP.NET. Generally, I think it's solid. The Windows Forms code blows the doors off of either Windows SDK or Java2 Swing. There's some low points in the .NET code, for sure. The sockets code in .NET for example is a little too low level, for example. But really, it's quite good overall.
Agreed. While OLE and the original Windows SDK sucked, that's ancient history. Focus on stuff from the last decade. The .NET API is excellent by and large.