Oh, forgive me Lords of Pun and Wordplay, but with seeing the username "doyoulikeworms (1094003)" being" listed above... I just wonder if I just opened up a "can of worms"?:O
Ok, on a more serious note: thank you for the design Mr. Baur!
I'm not sure if you're referring to Python, but just in case:
Andy reasonably experienced programmer can pick up basic Python in two days or so.
A friend of mine switched from Perl to Python and was writing IRC bots a day later.
ESR describes how he was doing metaclass programming in less than a week:
To say I was astonished would have been positively wallowing in understatement. It's remarkable enough when implementations of simple techniques work exactly as expected the first time; but my first metaclass hack in a new language, six days from a cold standing start? Even if we stipulate that I am a fairly talented hacker, this is an amazing testament to Python's clarity and elegance of design.
And since syntax/readability is to a large extend guaranteed by the whitespace in Python, it'll only become easier to dive into existing code for someone else.
I'm mainly a C hacker, but I don't get why people would prefer Python over Java.
I think it's the whole "Python fits in your brain" thing. Or as ESR has once put it: Python is the language that comes the least between you and the problem you're trying to solve and I completely agree with that.
Speaking for my self, just as an example and not trying to start a X vs Y war:
I have to lookup how to open a file for input in Java every single time.. in Python my first guess is usually correct and opening files is just a matter of filehandle = open("file.txt", "r")
I do not like the hoops through which Java is trying to make me jump at all..
That was my first surprise. My second came a couple of hours into the project, when I noticed (allowing for pauses needed to look up new features in Programming Python) I was generating working code nearly as fast as I could type. When I realized this, I was quite startled. An important measure of effort in coding is the frequency with which you write something that doesn't actually match your mental representation of the problem, and have to backtrack on realizing that what you just typed won't actually tell the language to do what you're thinking. An important measure of good language design is how rapidly the percentage of missteps of this kind falls as you gain experience with the language.
My personal experience are summed up with the lines:
- Easy to write and maintain.
- A very fast development time compared to many other languages.. and for most applications I work on, my time is more precious than that of a CPU.
And it's not just for me... my customers love it and are amazed how frequently I can come with a functional prototype or a completely working application. If the app. runs in 2 or in 5 seconds is far less important for what I'm doing. (Yes, low level, high performance computing is a different story)
- Powerful and flexible enough to do most things I want, scales from small to big apps, from functional programming to OO programming; excellent modules.
- Because the language is almost pseudo code like, I notice that I have noticeably less bugs in my code. Not just just the moment after writing it, but in the entire lifespan of the application I have less maintenance than I think any other language.
First of all: you raise very valid points and they are well taken. Here's a small summary that helps explain my first reaction:
How exactly was he "right in the middle of it?"
He was a science writer at MIT. Pons and Fleischmann's work was at the U of Utah.
Dr. Mallove also worked at MIT where he uncovered serious manipulation of data on the cold fusion experiments there in 1989. This led him to resign his position at MIT over 10 years ago and begin researching the truth behind cold fusion and other new energy discoveries, and eventually led to his publishing the first issue of Infinite Energy in 1995. See interview for further details from his perspective.
Sorry, but if I have to choose between literally hundreds of mainstream scientists who are unable to reproduce Pons and Fleishmann's work, and this guy, I know who I'm gonna believe.
There are plenty who (are) get(ting) interesting results as well:
By 1991, 92 groups of researchers from 10 different countries had reported excess heat, tritium, neutrons or other nuclear effects.[73] Over 3,000 cold fusion papers have been published including about 1,000 in peer-reviewed journals (see indices in further reading, below). In March 1995, Dr. Edmund Storms compiled a list of 21 published papers reporting excess heat and articles have been published in peer reviewed journals such as Naturwissenschaften, European Physical Journal A, European Physical Journal C, Journal of Solid State Phenomena, Physical Review A, Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, and Journal of Fusion Energy (see indices in further reading, below).
The generation of excess heat has been reported by (among others):
* Michael McKubre, director of the Energy Research Center at SRI International,
* Giuliano Preparata (ENEA (Italy))
* Richard A. Oriani (University of Minnesota, in December 1990),
* Robert A. Huggins (at Stanford University in March 1990),
* Yoshiaki Arata (Osaka University, Japan),
* T. Mizuno (Hokkaido University, Japan),
* T. Ohmori (Japan),
"Despite a backdrop of meager funding and career-killing derision from mainstream scientists and engineers, cold fusion is anything but a dead field of research. Presenters at the MIT event estimated that 3,000 published studies from scientists around the world have contributed to the growing canon of evidence suggesting that small but promising amounts of energy can be generated using the infamous tabletop apparatus."
"MIT's Peter Hagelstein, on the other hand, said "cold fusion" reactions have yielded surplus energy from as far back as the initial experiments in 1989. Verification of these controversial results is not the problem -- many labs around the world have reproduced parts of the results many times. "
"Last March, scientists at the annual conference of the august American Physical Society heard presentations on cold fusion. Next month, the Second International Conference on Future Energy will be held in Washington, D.C.
He tells basically the whole story about the why and how events took place. He could tell that because he was right in the middle of it:
Eugene Mallove held a B.S. (1969) and M.S. (1970) in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from MIT and a Sc.D (1975) in environmental health sciences from Harvard University. He had worked for technology engineering firms such as Hughes Research Laboratories, the Analytic Science Corporation, and MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, and he consulted in research and development of new energies.
Mallove taught science journalism at MIT and Boston University and was chief science writer at MIT's news office, a position he left as part of a dispute with the school over cold fusion.
This interview basically made me angry and sad, hearing how e.g. the numbers were cooked by reviewers of the Fleischmann and Pons work, because there was so much money flowing into hot fusion research.
I always had the impression that scientists follow the truth, no matter where it leads. This interview reminded me that scientists are humans too, all with their own agenda.
"Pistorius' lawyers countered with independent tests conducted by a team led by MIT professor Hugh M. Herr that claimed to show he doesn't gain any advantage over able-bodied runners."
I recalled reading an article about this earlier and after some searching I found it again:
"According to the IAAF report, the "mechanical advantage of the blade in relation to the healthy ankle joint of an able bodied athlete is higher than 30-percent." Additionally, Pistorius uses 25-percent less energy than average runners due to the artificial limbs, therefore giving him an unfair advantage on the track... or so they say"
Now I am wondering about why the MIT is saying that there's no difference. No difference vs 25-30% difference is ehm, a huge difference...
No, not bad at all. As long as one is aware of the true speed any unit if fine. Perhaps my driving instructor should have used furlongs per fortnight for better results.;)
In driving, where things happen in fractions of second, I seriously doubt that they'll be better at multitasking while driving.
Sadly, many people don't have an idea how fast they're actually going when they're driving 120 kilometer/hour.
My driving instructor provided a few theory lessons for a small group of people (~ 10) in preparation for the theoretical exam required to obtain a drivers license.
At some moment he asked out of the blue: do any of you have a clue how fast you're going in meters per second if your driving 120 kilometer/hour?
I could answer that quite fast (33.333.. meters/second) because I was the only one who had been to some elementary physics class and I could recall the number because I had seen it so frequently in assignments.
I'd say that 8 out of 10 people had trouble believing that you're actually doing 33 meter every single second.
Do you have a link for a command chair of awesomeness though? That IS missing. And I am definitely looking forward to having a wall (or more) that's a screen.
Why oh why do I have to think about a situation I was in a few years ago.
I was taking driving lessons together with a friend of me. I was sitting in the backseat when the driving instructor was explaining how it was very important to look ahead, but also that _you will tend to go wherever you are looking_.
And as if to emphasize the importance of this, our sometimes playful Universe introduced a few seconds later this synchronicity in the form of one of the most stunning blonde girls we have ever seen.. (oh those legs!)... my friend almost hit the sidewalk and I can still hear our driving instructor saying: "SEE!? That's what I mean! Keep your eyes on the road"
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm.. like the Undernet IRC network?
(Sorry, sorry for my replies.. despite its seriousness, this new item just has too many options for playful comments.)
Oh, forgive me Lords of Pun and Wordplay, but with seeing the username "doyoulikeworms (1094003)" being" listed above... I just wonder if I just opened up a "can of worms"?
Ok, on a more serious note: thank you for the design Mr. Baur!
This isn't a "cantenna"! This is a "cancasket" :O
Andy reasonably experienced programmer can pick up basic Python in two days or so.
A friend of mine switched from Perl to Python and was writing IRC bots a day later.
ESR describes how he was doing metaclass programming in less than a week:
http://www.python.org/about/success/esr/
And since syntax/readability is to a large extend guaranteed by the whitespace in Python, it'll only become easier to dive into existing code for someone else.
I think it's the whole "Python fits in your brain" thing. Or as ESR has once put it: Python is the language that comes the least between you and the problem you're trying to solve and I completely agree with that.
Speaking for my self, just as an example and not trying to start a X vs Y war:
I have to lookup how to open a file for input in Java every single time.. in Python my first guess is usually correct and opening files is just a matter of filehandle = open("file.txt", "r")
I do not like the hoops through which Java is trying to make me jump at all..
http://www.javacoffeebreak.com/java103/java103.html
Source and a nice read with the subject "Why Python?":
http://www.python.org/about/success/esr/
My personal experience are summed up with the lines:
- Easy to write and maintain.
- A very fast development time compared to many other languages.. and for most applications I work on, my time is more precious than that of a CPU.
And it's not just for me... my customers love it and are amazed how frequently I can come with a functional prototype or a completely working application. If the app. runs in 2 or in 5 seconds is far less important for what I'm doing. (Yes, low level, high performance computing is a different story)
- Powerful and flexible enough to do most things I want, scales from small to big apps, from functional programming to OO programming; excellent modules.
- Because the language is almost pseudo code like, I notice that I have noticeably less bugs in my code. Not just just the moment after writing it, but in the entire lifespan of the application I have less maintenance than I think any other language.
Duhh! Every hacker knows that you should always copy the garbage file when hacking the Gibson XDxD
Greetz,
AcidOne
First of all: you raise very valid points and they are well taken. Here's a small summary that helps explain my first reaction:
Dr. Mallove also worked at MIT where he uncovered serious manipulation of data on the cold fusion experiments there in 1989. This led him to resign his position at MIT over 10 years ago and begin researching the truth behind cold fusion and other new energy discoveries, and eventually led to his publishing the first issue of Infinite Energy in 1995. See interview for further details from his perspective.
http://www.wanttoknow.info/eugenemallove
There are plenty who (are) get(ting) interesting results as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion#Experimental_reports
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/08/cold_fusion?currentPage=all#
Navy Discovers Cold Fusion (again):
http://www.zpenergy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2292
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=33C82463A8CBFC88
He tells basically the whole story about the why and how events took place. He could tell that because he was right in the middle of it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Mallove
This interview basically made me angry and sad, hearing how e.g. the numbers were cooked by reviewers of the Fleischmann and Pons work, because there was so much money flowing into hot fusion research.
I always had the impression that scientists follow the truth, no matter where it leads. This interview reminded me that scientists are humans too, all with their own agenda.
You just gave my mind a way to fast association with "uptime"... ;o
:P
And to be ahead of obvious replies: has Netcraft confirmed it?
Where do you think all those hot grits are produced?
Hmm.. how about (an encrypted) Skype (call)?!?
I recalled reading an article about this earlier and after some searching I found it again:
And yes, it's about the same runner.
From this article:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/17/prosthetic-limbed-runner-disqualified-from-olympics/
"According to the IAAF report, the "mechanical advantage of the blade in relation to the healthy ankle joint of an able bodied athlete is higher than 30-percent." Additionally, Pistorius uses 25-percent less energy than average runners due to the artificial limbs, therefore giving him an unfair advantage on the track... or so they say"
Now I am wondering about why the MIT is saying that there's no difference. No difference vs 25-30% difference is ehm, a huge difference...
We know, this is Slashdot, no need to state the obvious.
Just kidding. Good post!
That position has already been fullfilled ;-o
The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of a space lawyer!
Since extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, I would like to present exhibit A:
Vodka Kreskova commercial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvIGy9w0K4s
That it's almost as multi-functional as the iPhone! :D
Conan O'Brien's iPhone Commercial:
http://13gb.com/media.php?media_id=2340
No, not bad at all. As long as one is aware of the true speed any unit if fine. Perhaps my driving instructor should have used furlongs per fortnight for better results. ;)
Sadly, many people don't have an idea how fast they're actually going when they're driving 120 kilometer/hour.
My driving instructor provided a few theory lessons for a small group of people (~ 10) in preparation for the theoretical exam required to obtain a drivers license.
At some moment he asked out of the blue: do any of you have a clue how fast you're going in meters per second if your driving 120 kilometer/hour?
I could answer that quite fast (33.333.. meters/second) because I was the only one who had been to some elementary physics class and I could recall the number because I had seen it so frequently in assignments.
I'd say that 8 out of 10 people had trouble believing that you're actually doing 33 meter every single second.
One second to react before braking...
Then the actual time to brake..
Then the distance add up quite fast!
Leading surveillance societies in the EU and the World 2007
You can also turn that around:
;-))
The #1 benefit for working at a company is that the restrooms are cleaned for you* and the toilet paper is provided for free**.
* Assuming this is done >= 1 times/day, as at my company.
** Requires situational awareness:
http://www.fivefourteen.net/motivational-posters/situational%20awareness.jpg
Here you go.
Chair
Wall/screen
And this ladies and gentlemen is the reason why laptops are now searched at airports.
:p
To find their missing stuff again!
I just love the irony in using a link to Yahoo! Finance to display the stock performance of Microsoft. :))
Darting eyes indeed!
Why oh why do I have to think about a situation I was in a few years ago.
I was taking driving lessons together with a friend of me. I was sitting in the backseat when the driving instructor was explaining how it was very important to look ahead, but also that _you will tend to go wherever you are looking_.
And as if to emphasize the importance of this, our sometimes playful Universe introduced a few seconds later this synchronicity in the form of one of the most stunning blonde girls we have ever seen.. (oh those legs!)... my friend almost hit the sidewalk and I can still hear our driving instructor saying: "SEE!? That's what I mean! Keep your eyes on the road"
It was such a brilliant moment.