Really? I don't know what planet you're on, but here on planet earth, much of the real work is being done in Java (by a very wide margin). (See http://www.langpop.com/ ).
Haskell and Erlang are barely a blip on the radar. I like and use Python regularly and it has it positives, but I have a hard time recommending it to my corporate customers (for various reasons having to do with availability of trained developers, performance and or broad industry support). By and large most work I see getting done is being done in Java or.Net languages. I can see why you posted as AC since clearly this was intended as flamebait.
Yes, Java core language is stagnating. Even JDK7 has not much new features.
I disagree. Java is evolving at a reasonably steady pace and while each subsequent release is not as radically different as its previous as in some newer languages, this is to be expected since the language is already fairly mature. Its usage however, is ever expanding.
If you check out the link above, you can see that C# is considerably behind Java in popularity (its even behind old standbys like C, C++, PHP and Perl) which makes me wonder where the "java is dead" crowd are getting their information. Technologies like LINQ/PLINQ are great, but very proprietary in a world that doesn't have to be tied to a specific platform. Why tie yourself down to proprietary extensions when perfectly viable alternatives exist? If MS were to open-source.Net and/or LINQ, then maybe they would stand a chance of being generally accepted, and maybe even incorporated into later versions of open source language environments, but corporate IT departments more and more are beginning to realize they don't have to be held hostage to proprietary technologies (it's taken a long time, but I see it happening every day and I for one, welcome it).
Almost every third party corporate application that I've seen implemented over the last 3-4 years has been based on Java, and most of them contain open-source libraries at their core. The richness of the available java libraries and open-source components makes developing applications from scratch unfeasible from a cost perspective. What better platform to develop in to take advantage of this vast array of pre-existing, pre-tested code than Java (or one of it's offspring such as Scala)?
I have to agree with you here. I develop (for corporate environments) in a fairly large range of languages depending customer desires. The trend has been (for several years now) that more and more development is being done in Java, whether rewriting legacy systems or completely new development.
The benefits that Java offers are more compelling than just about any alternatives. The arguments against its ability to "run anywhere" are old and most (if not all) are largely inconsequential to todays environments.
A majority of development today is web-centric (intranet or internet) so issues with AWT or pathname incompatibility across systems are rarely encountered, and when they are, there are plenty of best-practices for dealing with them.
The old line about Java performance being inferior is also largely a dead issue as it's be shown time and time again that the newer JIT enabled VMs allow byte code to perform on par with native C/C++.
As far as being a dead language, I certainly don't see that happening any time soon. The language is under constant development and significant new features are being added with each major release, both to the platform (performance, concurrency, garbage collection, etc) as well as the language itself (modularization, closures,annotations, etc). The language is constantly evolving, but still, as much as possible, retaining backward compatibility.
Even if the language itself is not able to keep up with advances in modern language design, there are spin-offs like Scala that can co-exist in the same JVM and are able to take advantage of the large java eco-system while providing a different programming paradigm.
I gave up being an fan-boy for technologies many years ago when I got burned with OS/2, and have since decided to embrace whatever languages and technologies are in demand, be it MS tools (VB and C#), Apple (Objective-c) or non-proprietary (Perl, PHP, Java, etc.). Folks that are quick to declare Java dead are obviously naive and don't have a clue about the way the IT world works. They can line up with the folks that declared mainframes and COBOL dead twenty years ago, while (according to a recent Computerworld article) more than 200 million lines of COBOL are still in use and a COBOL gig is still considered the safest gig in IT today.
Bill Gates talked about Information Fatigue years ago when Microsoft was trying to bring together disparate information systems with their backend server tools.
The same Bill Gates that said
"I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system,
and possibly program, of all time. As the successor to DOS, which has
over 10,000,000 systems in use, it creates incredible opportunities for
everyone involved with PCs."
or
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
(Yes, I know he denies it, but I'm afraid this quote with stick with him for some time to come)
Shrewd businessman? Yes. Prognosticator? Not so much.
Your forgetting basic biology. The earth is an ecosystem. Even minor events can have a rippling effect on species far removed from the immediately affected area. I live on the Gulf Coast and I recall when I was young(er) Escambia bay in Pensacola, Fl was completely dead - no fish at all for many years (due to pollution from a paper mill in for north of the bay). It took nearly 20 years for the bay to recover. Now were looking at the possibility of killing off not only numerous bays, estuaries creeks and rivers along the coast, but possibly vast stretches of the Gulf itself.
Something this big does not stay local. The collateral damage from this is incalculable and only time will tell how far reaching the effects are.
Your comment reminds me of an old George Carlin monologue about people worrying about damaging the Planet with pollution. In his usual irony he notes that the Earth will be fine. It's survived earthquakes, volcanoes, asteroid collisions, atomic bombs and lots of other crap. It doesn't give a sh!t about us or what we do to it. The point is it's so arrogant to think we can affect the earth, for good or bad, when in reality, it's life, including human life that's we're screwing with our insanity.
We can continue down this path, with the "we can't get by without oil - at least not while I'm driving my Volvo" crap, but if we don't get hold of this problem, we'll become the decomposing matter that will eventually become some later life form's fossil fuel.
I hear this complaint all the time - as if today's programmers are sloppier than "back n the day". Well I say bullhockey. While it's true that programs today tend to consume much more resources than the days of old, but the reason is not sloppy programming. Back in the day on that system with 4k of RAM, you didn't have a fancy graphical front end, drag-n-drop, fully-immersive, interactive interface complete with audio and video animation. Back then, If you were really clever, you could maybe implement a simple text menu system - there wasn't even a mouse!. The bloat of today has very little to do with sloppy programming and more to do with all the bells and whistles we expect on any modern commercial application. If you want to bypass the bloat, you can probably still run your old copy of Wordstar, or maybe even ElectricPencil if you choose, but I suspect the memories of days gone by are a lot more pleasant than the reality.
Point A:
Let's dispense with any questions about whether so called "greenhouse gases" can actually cause the "greenhouse" effect.
Scientists can produce the greenhouse effect in laboratories. This is not speculation, this is empirical evidence. A little knowledge of chemistry (which I believe is still considered "hard" science), and you can understand why. Without the "greenhouse" effect life would not exist on Earth, but would simply be a frozen rock. The greenhouse effect is what keeps the planet warm. We also know empirically that the more CO2 and/or methane that is pumped into a closed system, the greater the effect. Again, this is all elementary earth science. If one is ignorant (or in denial) enough to dispute that there is such an effect, then there is really no point in discussing the issue father, because in their case, facts don't matter.
Point B:
We know that certain activities produce greenhouse gases. Burning fossil fuels, cows farting and others all generate quantifiable amounts of CO2 and methane. Again, this is not in question. This can be, and has been proven in laboratories many times. We can also calculate how much CO2 is produced each year though surveying the amount of fossil fuels consumed, so there is no wiggle room here either.
Point C:
We know plants absorb CO2 and release oxygen back into the atmosphere. We can also, without doing any guesswork, quantify how much CO2 is absorbed by the density of plant life across the globe. We know without a doubt that the amount of plant life is decreasing as the area of rainforest is decreasing at the rate of about 30 million acres per year. Therefore, it is an absolute fact that the amount of CO2 being absorbed by plant-life is decreasing at an alarming rate. Again, no one (in their right mind) can argue with this fact.
I'm sorry, but there is just no reasonable justification for denying that there is an increasing greenhouse effect taking place on Earth and that humans are contributing to it. Even if you choose to ignore the measurements taken over the last several years that show the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is increasing and write it off as a natural cycle of the earth. Points A through C are not disputable. Even if there is a natural cycle taking place, wouldn't it be prudent (knowing points A though C) to try and slow the process down by limiting the amount of emissions and reversing the deforestation? Do people really have to shoot themselves in the head to know that a bullet going through soft brain tissue is likely to cause some damage? I'm all for a healthy debate, but can we check ignorance and stupidity at the door please?
new iPhones that come with new firmware preinstalled won't be able to take advantage...
That's certainly possible, but this has been a cat and mouse game that the "jailbreak" community has been playing all along.
Every time Apple closes a hole in an effort to stop jailbreaks from working, the community responds with another break that gets around Apples "fixes". The latest round of this game (OS 3.1.3) took jailbreakers about two weeks to come out with a new "break".
Who knows how long this will go on, or who will win that game.
This issue (installing Android) is a little different however. Once you've installed Android (assuming you prefer it to iPhone OS), you won't need or want to install any more firmware upgrades from Apple. This will leave Apple impotent to stop users from doing as they please with their own phones.
Therefore, assuming Apple doesn't come out with pre-installed firmware that can't be broken (which despite many attempts they have not been able to accomplish so far), there will be no way for Apple to keep people from installing Android.
Of course, that doesn't mean that Apple won't resort to legal tactics to try and shut down the jailbreak community.
...or if the firmware fixes some low-level problem that cannot be addressed from software.
firmware == software While it's possible/likely that firmware upgrades will address problems, there is no reason these problems can't be fixed in the Android release as well. Essentially, much as jailbreaking places hooks into Apples official firmware distribution to allow additional functionality, the Android implementation replaces or augments a firmware file prior to being restored to the iPhone.
Why would you need to upgrade to later firmware versions if you're running Android on your iPhone? Seems to me you would only want to upgrade to later Android versions.
...nor develop for it.
The point your're missing is that you WON'T have to develop for the iPhone. You can develop for Android and you apps will work on all Android phones as well as iPhone that have this installed.
Sigh, why can't hardware makers these days just do that: make hardware?
It won't be long before the differences in hardware between Apples products and Droid based products will be minimal. At that point Droid phones will have a distinct advantage in being able to do things Apple can't, if simply because Droid phones won't have all the restrictions that Apples products do.
Running for office on a "get tougher on crime" platform has been going on for as long as I can remember. Every new candidate takes this on as a campaign slogan - being tougher on crime that the incumbent.
My point being, is it any wonder after so many iterations this tactic, that the classification of anything short of belching in public has become a felony?
I'd like to think that one day the trend will reverse itself and at some point, some rational sense of "punishment fitting the crime" to prevail.
Unfortunately, the older I get and the more I see the way that many voters are simply ill-informed, mindless pawns to be manipulated by the parties they subscribe to, the less optimistic I become.
However, as a developer, assuming you wish to produce an app to sell, you've got to fall in line with Apples demands and pray that they "let" you sell your app (which you won't even know the verdict of until after you've spent all the time and resources to develop).
Ah, but "nearly" is the keyword here. The end result is that he wound up becoming the youngest captain in Starfleet history - and eventually Admiral. Not exactly an admonition for cheating.
I guess he meant that as the supply goes down, the more profit can be realized per unit.
Or maybe he just didn't count on m = (b + g - x) ^ n (where m= misery factor, b=bitching factor, g = carryoutthegarbage factor, x = (take a guess) and n = number of wives).
Everything you say is absolutely correct. In effect, you never really own an iPhone. You are just licensing the use of Apples hardware/software and you have zilch to say about the decisions Apple makes regarding what that will/wont allow to be done to the device, and even what platform and languages you use to develop for the device. Which is why, as a developer, I can't imagine the draw to develop for the iPhad platform (the potential for riches is greatly overrated), when there is an alternative.
Slashdot Mirror
Really? I don't know what planet you're on, but here on planet earth, much of the real work is being done in Java (by a very wide margin). (See http://www.langpop.com/ ). .Net languages.
Haskell and Erlang are barely a blip on the radar. I like and use Python regularly and it has it positives, but I have a hard time recommending it to my corporate customers (for various reasons having to do with availability of trained developers, performance and or broad industry support). By and large most work I see getting done is being done in Java or
I can see why you posted as AC since clearly this was intended as flamebait.
Yes, Java core language is stagnating. Even JDK7 has not much new features.
I disagree. Java is evolving at a reasonably steady pace and while each subsequent release is not as radically different as its previous as in some newer languages, this is to be expected since the language is already fairly mature. Its usage however, is ever expanding.
.Net and/or LINQ, then maybe they would stand a chance of being generally accepted, and maybe even incorporated into later versions of open source language environments, but corporate IT departments more and more are beginning to realize they don't have to be held hostage to proprietary technologies (it's taken a long time, but I see it happening every day and I for one, welcome it).
http://langpop.com/
If you check out the link above, you can see that C# is considerably behind Java in popularity (its even behind old standbys like C, C++, PHP and Perl) which makes me wonder where the "java is dead" crowd are getting their information. Technologies like LINQ/PLINQ are great, but very proprietary in a world that doesn't have to be tied to a specific platform. Why tie yourself down to proprietary extensions when perfectly viable alternatives exist? If MS were to open-source
Almost every third party corporate application that I've seen implemented over the last 3-4 years has been based on Java, and most of them contain open-source libraries at their core. The richness of the available java libraries and open-source components makes developing applications from scratch unfeasible from a cost perspective. What better platform to develop in to take advantage of this vast array of pre-existing, pre-tested code than Java (or one of it's offspring such as Scala)?
I have to agree with you here. I develop (for corporate environments) in a fairly large range of languages depending customer desires. The trend has been (for several years now) that more and more development is being done in Java, whether rewriting legacy systems or completely new development.
The benefits that Java offers are more compelling than just about any alternatives. The arguments against its ability to "run anywhere" are old and most (if not all) are largely inconsequential to todays environments.
A majority of development today is web-centric (intranet or internet) so issues with AWT or pathname incompatibility across systems are rarely encountered, and when they are, there are plenty of best-practices for dealing with them.
The old line about Java performance being inferior is also largely a dead issue as it's be shown time and time again that the newer JIT enabled VMs allow byte code to perform on par with native C/C++.
As far as being a dead language, I certainly don't see that happening any time soon. The language is under constant development and significant new features are being added with each major release, both to the platform (performance, concurrency, garbage collection, etc) as well as the language itself (modularization, closures,annotations, etc). The language is constantly evolving, but still, as much as possible, retaining backward compatibility.
Even if the language itself is not able to keep up with advances in modern language design, there are spin-offs like Scala that can co-exist in the same JVM and are able to take advantage of the large java eco-system while providing a different programming paradigm.
I gave up being an fan-boy for technologies many years ago when I got burned with OS/2, and have since decided to embrace whatever languages and technologies are in demand, be it MS tools (VB and C#), Apple (Objective-c) or non-proprietary (Perl, PHP, Java, etc.).
Folks that are quick to declare Java dead are obviously naive and don't have a clue about the way the IT world works. They can line up with the folks that declared mainframes and COBOL dead twenty years ago, while (according to a recent Computerworld article) more than 200 million lines of COBOL are still in use and a COBOL gig is still considered the safest gig in IT today.
Given all the OS swings that the OLPC project has gone through, maybe they should be thinking of Android, too.
Funny you should mention that. According to Negroponte, XO-3 will most likely use Adroid. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/education/one-laptop-per-child-android-meet-dr-negroponte/3976
Bill Gates talked about Information Fatigue years ago when Microsoft was trying to bring together disparate information systems with their backend server tools.
The same Bill Gates that said
"I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time. As the successor to DOS, which has over 10,000,000 systems in use, it creates incredible opportunities for everyone involved with PCs."
or
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
(Yes, I know he denies it, but I'm afraid this quote with stick with him for some time to come)
Shrewd businessman? Yes.
Prognosticator? Not so much.
Your forgetting basic biology. The earth is an ecosystem. Even minor events can have a rippling effect on species far removed from the immediately affected area.
I live on the Gulf Coast and I recall when I was young(er) Escambia bay in Pensacola, Fl was completely dead - no fish at all for many years (due to pollution from a paper mill in for north of the bay). It took nearly 20 years for the bay to recover.
Now were looking at the possibility of killing off not only numerous bays, estuaries creeks and rivers along the coast, but possibly vast stretches of the Gulf itself.
Something this big does not stay local.
The collateral damage from this is incalculable and only time will tell how far reaching the effects are.
Flamebait? There must be some BP shills getting their turn at moderating.
Your comment reminds me of an old George Carlin monologue about people worrying about damaging the Planet with pollution. In his usual irony he notes that the Earth will be fine. It's survived earthquakes, volcanoes, asteroid collisions, atomic bombs and lots of other crap.
It doesn't give a sh!t about us or what we do to it.
The point is it's so arrogant to think we can affect the earth, for good or bad, when in reality, it's life , including human life that's we're screwing with our insanity.
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2018336872
We can continue down this path, with the "we can't get by without oil - at least not while I'm driving my Volvo" crap, but if we don't get hold of this problem, we'll become the decomposing matter that will eventually become some later life form's fossil fuel.
I hear this complaint all the time - as if today's programmers are sloppier than "back n the day".
Well I say bullhockey.
While it's true that programs today tend to consume much more resources than the days of old, but the reason is not sloppy programming. Back in the day on that system with 4k of RAM, you didn't have a fancy graphical front end, drag-n-drop, fully-immersive, interactive interface complete with audio and video animation. Back then, If you were really clever, you could maybe implement a simple text menu system - there wasn't even a mouse!.
The bloat of today has very little to do with sloppy programming and more to do with all the bells and whistles we expect on any modern commercial application.
If you want to bypass the bloat, you can probably still run your old copy of Wordstar, or maybe even ElectricPencil if you choose, but I suspect the memories of days gone by are a lot more pleasant than the reality.
Point A:
Let's dispense with any questions about whether so called "greenhouse gases" can actually cause the "greenhouse" effect.
Scientists can produce the greenhouse effect in laboratories. This is not speculation, this is empirical evidence. A little knowledge of chemistry (which I believe is still considered "hard" science), and you can understand why. Without the "greenhouse" effect life would not exist on Earth, but would simply be a frozen rock. The greenhouse effect is what keeps the planet warm. We also know empirically that the more CO2 and/or methane that is pumped into a closed system, the greater the effect. Again, this is all elementary earth science. If one is ignorant (or in denial) enough to dispute that there is such an effect, then there is really no point in discussing the issue father, because in their case, facts don't matter.
Point B:
We know that certain activities produce greenhouse gases. Burning fossil fuels, cows farting and others all generate quantifiable amounts of CO2 and methane. Again, this is not in question. This can be, and has been proven in laboratories many times. We can also calculate how much CO2 is produced each year though surveying the amount of fossil fuels consumed, so there is no wiggle room here either.
Point C:
We know plants absorb CO2 and release oxygen back into the atmosphere. We can also, without doing any guesswork, quantify how much CO2 is absorbed by the density of plant life across the globe. We know without a doubt that the amount of plant life is decreasing as the area of rainforest is decreasing at the rate of about 30 million acres per year. Therefore, it is an absolute fact that the amount of CO2 being absorbed by plant-life is decreasing at an alarming rate. Again, no one (in their right mind) can argue with this fact.
I'm sorry, but there is just no reasonable justification for denying that there is an increasing greenhouse effect taking place on Earth and that humans are contributing to it. Even if you choose to ignore the measurements taken over the last several years that show the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is increasing and write it off as a natural cycle of the earth. Points A through C are not disputable. Even if there is a natural cycle taking place, wouldn't it be prudent (knowing points A though C) to try and slow the process down by limiting the amount of emissions and reversing the deforestation?
Do people really have to shoot themselves in the head to know that a bullet going through soft brain tissue is likely to cause some damage?
I'm all for a healthy debate, but can we check ignorance and stupidity at the door please?
I guess the question to ask is - what is more vulnerable to to virus threats, Linux (OSS) or Windows (Closed source)?
Nuff said.
new iPhones that come with new firmware preinstalled won't be able to take advantage...
That's certainly possible, but this has been a cat and mouse game that the "jailbreak" community has been playing all along.
Every time Apple closes a hole in an effort to stop jailbreaks from working, the community responds with another break that gets around Apples "fixes". The latest round of this game (OS 3.1.3) took jailbreakers about two weeks to come out with a new "break".
Who knows how long this will go on, or who will win that game.
This issue (installing Android) is a little different however. Once you've installed Android (assuming you prefer it to iPhone OS), you won't need or want to install any more firmware upgrades from Apple. This will leave Apple impotent to stop users from doing as they please with their own phones.
Therefore, assuming Apple doesn't come out with pre-installed firmware that can't be broken (which despite many attempts they have not been able to accomplish so far), there will be no way for Apple to keep people from installing Android.
Of course, that doesn't mean that Apple won't resort to legal tactics to try and shut down the jailbreak community.
...or if the firmware fixes some low-level problem that cannot be addressed from software.
firmware == software
While it's possible/likely that firmware upgrades will address problems, there is no reason these problems can't be fixed in the Android release as well. Essentially, much as jailbreaking places hooks into Apples official firmware distribution to allow additional functionality, the Android implementation replaces or augments a firmware file prior to being restored to the iPhone.
Same reason you pay the MS tax when you buy an off-the-shelf PC to run Linux on.
block it in their upcoming firmware version
Why would you need to upgrade to later firmware versions if you're running Android on your iPhone? Seems to me you would only want to upgrade to later Android versions.
The point your're missing is that you WON'T have to develop for the iPhone. You can develop for Android and you apps will work on all Android phones as well as iPhone that have this installed.
Sigh, why can't hardware makers these days just do that: make hardware?
It won't be long before the differences in hardware between Apples products and Droid based products will be minimal. At that point Droid phones will have a distinct advantage in being able to do things Apple can't, if simply because Droid phones won't have all the restrictions that Apples products do.
Running for office on a "get tougher on crime" platform has been going on for as long as I can remember. Every new candidate takes this on as a campaign slogan - being tougher on crime that the incumbent.
My point being, is it any wonder after so many iterations this tactic, that the classification of anything short of belching in public has become a felony?
I'd like to think that one day the trend will reverse itself and at some point, some rational sense of "punishment fitting the crime" to prevail.
Unfortunately, the older I get and the more I see the way that many voters are simply ill-informed, mindless pawns to be manipulated by the parties they subscribe to, the less optimistic I become.
forst pist
Better check that CPU dude, sounds like a bladder infection!
There ya go...
And I thought I was finally get to read through the comments without an iPhad post.
Oh well, maybe tomorrow.
A corollary to this is that Ebert can never be taken seriously.
From a legal standpoint, and as an iPhone end-user you are absolutely correct.
You can even put it in a blender if you choose
http://www.blendtec.com/willitblend/videos.aspx?video=iphone
However, as a developer, assuming you wish to produce an app to sell, you've got to fall in line with Apples demands and pray that they "let" you sell your app (which you won't even know the verdict of until after you've spent all the time and resources to develop).
Ah, but "nearly" is the keyword here.
The end result is that he wound up becoming the youngest captain in Starfleet history - and eventually Admiral. Not exactly an admonition for cheating.
Cuz Captain Kirk showed them that cheating is not really cheating. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Maru
I guess he meant that as the supply goes down, the more profit can be realized per unit.
Or maybe he just didn't count on m = (b + g - x) ^ n (where m= misery factor, b=bitching factor, g = carryoutthegarbage factor, x = (take a guess) and n = number of wives).
LOL. That's what I thought of when I read this... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5s5qGg01nE
Everything you say is absolutely correct. In effect, you never really own an iPhone. You are just licensing the use of Apples hardware/software and you have zilch to say about the decisions Apple makes regarding what that will/wont allow to be done to the device, and even what platform and languages you use to develop for the device.
Which is why, as a developer, I can't imagine the draw to develop for the iPhad platform (the potential for riches is greatly overrated), when there is an alternative.