Call me a pessimist, but I can't see modern Hollywood producing such a violent and gory film. This will probably be another sci-fi/horror flick turned PG-13 (which you can't really call Doom). No studio in it's right mind is going to release a film with people gutted and hanging on hooks. Soccer Moms of the world would have them for lunch.
Since the AMD64 instruction set can also run code compiled for 32 bit, it can also work with 32 bit pointers. However, any code optimized for AMD64, will probably contain all 64 bit pointers.
I guess if you plan on shelving out for 64 bit, you should plan on getting more ram w/ it.
At least in way.. an above post mentions how important metal fabrication is and the number of workers in this industry. Blacksmiths primarily made weapons that are now outdated by well over a century. Sure they made things other than swords and such, but that was what drove the trade. Software on the other hand is more essential to modern weapons than ever. So I don't see how programmers could go the way of the Blacksmith. Beyond that, Of course, software also goes way beyond the weapons trade. So the comparison is a little off-base.
I can't imagine a future where software won't play a critical role. Hardware will just become faster and cheaper and allow for more and more advanced software.
I think the real reason why coding is such an ill-respected trade is due to a lack of understanding on the part of those in power (both in the government and major corporations).
The difference is that a company like Microsoft says "we don't like you and will sue you for patent infringement" whereas Novell is saying "if you sue us we'll sue you back". Big difference.
Actually, I don't know of any instance where MS sued on infringement. They've certainly made a lot of threats, but I think MS would rather stay out of court as much as possible. I don't think Novell expects to see anyone in court, they're just calling the bluff.
This is usually due to OSX's font rendering libraries. I use Linux and have similar problems when browsing with XFT enabled firefox. I'm not sure if OSX uses XFT, but it looks like XFT... If you can turn off anti-aliasing, font smoothing, and all of the OSX eye candy, it will probably go faster. But if you're like me.. you'll probably find the more eye friendly rendering more of a benefit than the speed.
After reading the article I fail to see what difference it makes. So Intel used something "similar" to a dual core to demonstrate how a dual core CPU would perform. What's the big deal? It doesn't seem like it's worth the time to write an article over something like this. I'm sure the "real" dual core processors will show up soon enough. It's not like they're selling whatever is in that computer.
The best way to learn Linux (IMO) is to dive straight into it on your own. I recommend starting out with a very minimal install of a distribution like Slackware and building it from scratch from the bottom up. Just get the gcc compiler and minimal components installed and then use that to compile a new version of gcc. From there, custom compile virtually everything you want on the system. Get all of the common services installed and working (especially Apache). I know it sounds torturous (and indeed it is the first time around), but ultimately you'll get a few week crash course in Linux that's hard to beat. Doing this will give you a very good understanding of how Linux works.
I would avoid using Gentoo to start out with (even though it's my personal fav), because the portage system masks most of the internal processes you want to understand. It would, however, be a great second lesson.
All you really need is a spare computer that you can do what you like with. Maybe your company will give you an old system they're ready to toss?
why this is such a big issue and using so many propietary (closed source) kernel modules isn't. I know my nvidia drivers are closed source.. and ATI's are also. Yeah I know this works in a little bit different manner.. but really.. it's the same result: the kernel is linking to closed source code.
In order for Linux to be a viable platform corporations will need to be able to produce drivers for their products (not just volunteers). Of course, many times those drivers will need to closed source. It's hard to fault a company for trying to protect their IP. Sure, it's better for us to have the driver as open source.. but if it's not good for the company gues what? No linux drivers. In the end, Linux is giving the same companies it's trying to prove its product to the big middle finger. The end result will be purely CLOSED source platforms. If open source is unwilling to allow people to create closed source applications for it's platform, then those people will just keep doing things they way they've always done it. It's not like we're giving them motivation to change!
One would think that after almost 4 years of our economy being in the crapper, and the fact that during all of that time outsourcing was becoming more and more popular, you wouldn't find people trying to argue that it's actually a GOOD thing. That's like saying the Soviet system really does work. Sorry! It's been several years and it's not helping!
Due to budget cuts, NASA has scaled back it's shuttle replacement program. Snip: 'Our new Space Shuttle design will be based on a modified Geo Metro. We feel using the Metro as a base will increase reliability and safety, while at the same time reducing the cost of production and fuel expenses.'
Apparantly NASA plans to use the Metro's excellent gas mileage to reduce the cost of orbital flights. When asked why they didn't consider using a hybrid vehicle, NASA replied: 'The cost of development is too high for our budget. Plus, those batteries have to be replaced every 10 years at a cost of $2000 a piece. This is simply out of our price range.'
Astronauts are furious at the selection, stating the Metro's horrible acceleration and pathetic top speed. 'It used to take us 8 1/2 minutes to achieve orbit, now it's a 12 hour trip' It's not like there are any rest stops on the way. I'm sure they won't be planning any vacations on the moon anytime soon either.
I do have at least a good 8 years of experience in pro audio. While I DO use Windows for a fair amount of music production, I also use Linux quite a bit (mostly just because I prefer Linux to Windows). No, it's not as good at pro audio as Windows or OSX. No, it's not even on the most distant radar. Especially since it's only had a low-latency capable kernel for less than a year.
Down the line, who knows? 10 years ago, no one thought Linux would be where it's at now in the server market. It still happened. My comment is directed at people who respond to information like this with a 'why bother, give it up' type attitude. Without so many people putting their time and effort into projects like this, there would be NO options for music production in Linux (pro or not). Was Windows always worthy of a Pro studio? Was Mac always? I don't know many people who used a Mac II for producing pro audio. It takes time.
As for building a pro studio.. that's something we all have! As a matter of fact I do know how much it costs, and no licensing fees are not a factor. What did I say to give you an impression like that anyway? Well.. let's see.. if I was building a pro studio, I would get a friggin' Mac. For home/hobbyist use.. sorry some of us can't afford home pro audio studios and personal sound engineers.
Finally, if I'm a kid, you must be quite old. Maybe you should retire.
There are so few musicians who produce music with Linux, you can't really blame professional sound card makers for not taking the time to create linux drivers for them.
Since, there are no such drivers there can be only one solution to those creating software like Muse: give up. That's right, just give up! Don't bother creating full featured software studios on Linux!! Nobody really uses Linux with their Digidesign right? So it must be a waste of time creating something like this. There is no need to try and introduce sound production to Linux because you can already do it on Windows and OSX. In fact, let's all just STOP, and wait for professional sound card drivers to magically appear on Linux. I'm sure all of these companies will come to their senses and create drivers for a system that has no user base in their market.
Now that I think of it, I can't figure out why Linux was created in the first place. I mean.. Windows already existed and did everything people really NEEDED right? So why BOTHER creating Linux. What a waste of time that was. Now that I think about it we should just stop developing everything in Linux! Just use Windows! Don't like that?? What's wrong?? Can't you afford a friggin Mac you lamer?! What about those crazy free/openBSD people! Windows existed then too! They should have never bothered. OS9 was OK, Apple didn't really NEED that BSD code.
Oh wait! I forgot to mention shareware/freeware that's available for Windows too! Microsoft has their own version of most of that stuff.. so don't create that either! It's a waste of time. I hate that stuff. I'm getting rid of Gaim and going back to regular AIM.. I LOVE THOST POP-UPS!!!!
My conclusion is that from now on we should simply rely on the large scale hardware/software vendors to provide us with our needs. I can do everything I need on a Mac, so I'm going to take a second Morgage and get a spanking new G5. That will show those fools!
Keep in mind that he left Microsoft before it became the Evile Empire that it is today. Back in those days, many people had reason to cheer M$. Unlike Macs of the time, you could FIX a dos computer rather than just get a new one once it started behaving erratically. Dos mode also allowed computers of the time to run much faster, displaying any window manager consumed a majority of the resources on those old machines. Gates obviously had his mind set on dominating the industry, but at least M$ had some quality products. I seriously doubt that modern day M$ would fund something like this.
Recently I've actually been trying to determine which would be better for new low cost servers, FreeBSD or a hardened Gentoo style Linux system. I like BOTH OS's (imagine that), and just want to use what works best for the application. Unfortunately, the net is flooded with fanatical cult-like debates and arguments that seem to only prove ignorance on both sides. Does anyone have any compelling reasons to use FreeBSD over modern Linux? Sure, FreeBSD has proven itself as being the best in the past and certainly isn't a poor choice, but I want to know what's best NOW. The above mentioned benchmarks favour Linux.. are there others to confirm this?
A google on All Computers seems to lead into oblivion. While, a small russian computer store of the same name is near the top of the list. Sounds to me like $500 Million may be more than their lifespan's total revenue. Apparently Intel is at fault for keeping this company of chip geniuses from gaining any sort of market presence what-so-ever. Intel must be to blame for the fact that this company came up with some amazingly trivial circuitry over a decade ago and has continued to produce such revolutionary products that no one has ever heard of them.
I downloaded the realplayer and I have to say that it is quite nice. Why is everyone complaining about it?? Does it matter so much that it's not open source? It is very lightweight and simplistic. It opens instantly and plays pretty much every type of common audio file. In fact, I see this becoming my prefered audio player. It is basic and intuitive and I don't have to squint to find buttons (a la XMMS). I particularly like it's gtk2 interface. GXine seems to be the only other common media player that uses gtk2, and it's a little too big and bulky for audio use (IMO). I'll have to try realplayer's video capabilities out sometime when I'm not at work... It's too bad that Real gets such a bantering from the open source community. This seems like a nice product.
While this review seems biased and certainly doesn't go very deep (it does seem more like a review of Nautilus than of gnome) it brings to light some of the many problems developing with the gnome project. Gnome seems to be moving in contridictory directions, and dominated by developers that are continuing a crusade against C++. They site performance reasons for this, but maintain a fairly bloated window manager. Sure it's not nearly as bloated as KDE, but for a group of developers that seem bent on performance, it's fairly slow.
Then you combine the fact that gnome applications are much more difficult and time consuming to develop than KDE apps, and you get a real lose/lose for gnome. They aren't really excelling at anything. KDE may be woefully slow, but at least it's easy to develope apps for and thus has a vast number of easy to use apps. Gnome/GTK have only a few nice (some very nice) apps available in comparison. Both KDE and gnome seem to have problems with navigation. But at least KDE has several well developed and extremely effective file managers (like Krusader).
What ARE the big advantages to using gnome?? There doesn't seem to be any anymore. I like the lightweight approach, so I use XFCE. Why would I want to use gnome?? I can think of reasons why I would want to move to KDE (and some reasons not to -mostly the fact that it's so slow), but unforutately I can't really think of any reasons to use gnome. Gnome developers need to figure out what they want their WM to be GOOD at! Being OK at everything won't work in the Linux world!
I believe that becoming a consistent member of an open source project is what made the difference for me. I was out of the industry for two years, but worked actively on an open source project for a majority of that time. My skills improved a great deal, and employers seemed to think it was about as close as you can get to "work experience" without actually having a job. I have a decent paying job now, and I think it is mostly due to this.
At the interview level, you need to be able to sell ANYTHING if you can get through an IT interview these days. Do some research on sales and marketing! Actually don't do some.. do a lot. Chances are, everyone else interviewing is just as qualified as you. You just need to be the one they like the most! Most of the time it comes down to.. OK we have all these great candidates, who would you most enjoy working with?
If you keep at it, you'll eventually get it. It took me two years, but it finally worked! That may not be comforting for someone who was recently layed off, but look at this way.. Do you want to server tables/deliver pizzas/*insert crappy job here* for the rest of your life or for two years??
It's seems that a lot of people are complaining about something that was seriously mis-reported. D CAN'T COMPILE C CODE!! (Sorry for shouting.. but I'm hoping to get peoples' attention). D can link to C binary code.. wow.. what a concept.. almost every programming language can do this. It's almost a requirement for any new language. Without it you would start with 0 code base, and no one will use it. The below text is taken directly from the article. Notice 'Binary Compatibility' and 'Link Compatible.'
Binary C Compatibility:
D programs can import and link against C code and libraries, providing D with free access to a huge amount of pre-written code. Note, however, that D is not link-compatible with C++, so pure C wrappers are required to access C++ code in D.
Personally, I've been praying for years for a language like this to get adopted. Why is it that I can only use full object oriented programming for web/network applications?! Sure.. I know you can do more than this with Java or C#, but is it really practical?? Usually it's just a massive drain on resources. If you need high performance, then you can't do better than C++. Unfortunately, C++ is a transitional language (just look at it's name..). A pure object oriented, fully compilable language that has no VM is desperately needed. I can't believe it's 2004, and such a thing still hasn't been adopted. I hope D (or something like it catches on.. As much as I loved it when it first came out, I'm sick of wrestling with C++ code.
Will making Linux more user friendly result in it becoming less secure? Hopefully your expertise will help shed some light on (and bring to and end) our discussion.
NO! Improved usability does not have to come at the cost of security (or stability)! The reason Microsoft's products have had problems with these issues is because usability was their primary (you could almost say only) concern for decades! The result?..an OS that's very easy to use, but unadvanced in terms of security, stability, and (in many cases) performance.
Linux is simply taking the reverse path, focusing on security and stability first, and then trying to build improved usability on top of that. MacOS1-9 had the same problems really. A great and very user-friendly interface that was build upon an insecure and somewhat unstable base. Time has shown that the only way to fix this is to pretty much start over from scratch..
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure the kernel developers will LOVE the idea of putting C++ in the kernel.
Call me a pessimist, but I can't see modern Hollywood producing such a violent and gory film. This will probably be another sci-fi/horror flick turned PG-13 (which you can't really call Doom). No studio in it's right mind is going to release a film with people gutted and hanging on hooks. Soccer Moms of the world would have them for lunch.
Since the AMD64 instruction set can also run code compiled for 32 bit, it can also work with 32 bit pointers. However, any code optimized for AMD64, will probably contain all 64 bit pointers.
I guess if you plan on shelving out for 64 bit, you should plan on getting more ram w/ it.
My old OC'd PIII doubles as a space heater.
*ouch* didn't realize this was such a no-no
Hello Skynet, nice to meet you.
At least in way.. an above post mentions how important metal fabrication is and the number of workers in this industry. Blacksmiths primarily made weapons that are now outdated by well over a century. Sure they made things other than swords and such, but that was what drove the trade. Software on the other hand is more essential to modern weapons than ever. So I don't see how programmers could go the way of the Blacksmith. Beyond that, Of course, software also goes way beyond the weapons trade. So the comparison is a little off-base.
I can't imagine a future where software won't play a critical role. Hardware will just become faster and cheaper and allow for more and more advanced software.
I think the real reason why coding is such an ill-respected trade is due to a lack of understanding on the part of those in power (both in the government and major corporations).
The difference is that a company like Microsoft says "we don't like you and will sue you for patent infringement" whereas Novell is saying "if you sue us we'll sue you back". Big difference.
Actually, I don't know of any instance where MS sued on infringement. They've certainly made a lot of threats, but I think MS would rather stay out of court as much as possible. I don't think Novell expects to see anyone in court, they're just calling the bluff.
This is usually due to OSX's font rendering libraries. I use Linux and have similar problems when browsing with XFT enabled firefox. I'm not sure if OSX uses XFT, but it looks like XFT... If you can turn off anti-aliasing, font smoothing, and all of the OSX eye candy, it will probably go faster. But if you're like me.. you'll probably find the more eye friendly rendering more of a benefit than the speed.
After reading the article I fail to see what difference it makes. So Intel used something "similar" to a dual core to demonstrate how a dual core CPU would perform. What's the big deal? It doesn't seem like it's worth the time to write an article over something like this. I'm sure the "real" dual core processors will show up soon enough. It's not like they're selling whatever is in that computer.
The best way to learn Linux (IMO) is to dive straight into it on your own. I recommend starting out with a very minimal install of a distribution like Slackware and building it from scratch from the bottom up. Just get the gcc compiler and minimal components installed and then use that to compile a new version of gcc. From there, custom compile virtually everything you want on the system. Get all of the common services installed and working (especially Apache). I know it sounds torturous (and indeed it is the first time around), but ultimately you'll get a few week crash course in Linux that's hard to beat. Doing this will give you a very good understanding of how Linux works.
I would avoid using Gentoo to start out with (even though it's my personal fav), because the portage system masks most of the internal processes you want to understand. It would, however, be a great second lesson.
All you really need is a spare computer that you can do what you like with. Maybe your company will give you an old system they're ready to toss?
why this is such a big issue and using so many propietary (closed source) kernel modules isn't. I know my nvidia drivers are closed source.. and ATI's are also. Yeah I know this works in a little bit different manner.. but really.. it's the same result: the kernel is linking to closed source code.
In order for Linux to be a viable platform corporations will need to be able to produce drivers for their products (not just volunteers). Of course, many times those drivers will need to closed source. It's hard to fault a company for trying to protect their IP. Sure, it's better for us to have the driver as open source.. but if it's not good for the company gues what? No linux drivers. In the end, Linux is giving the same companies it's trying to prove its product to the big middle finger. The end result will be purely CLOSED source platforms. If open source is unwilling to allow people to create closed source applications for it's platform, then those people will just keep doing things they way they've always done it. It's not like we're giving them motivation to change!
One would think that after almost 4 years of our economy being in the crapper, and the fact that during all of that time outsourcing was becoming more and more popular, you wouldn't find people trying to argue that it's actually a GOOD thing. That's like saying the Soviet system really does work. Sorry! It's been several years and it's not helping!
Where is that outsourcing related ecomomic boom?!
Due to budget cuts, NASA has scaled back it's shuttle replacement program. Snip: 'Our new Space Shuttle design will be based on a modified Geo Metro. We feel using the Metro as a base will increase reliability and safety, while at the same time reducing the cost of production and fuel expenses.'
Apparantly NASA plans to use the Metro's excellent gas mileage to reduce the cost of orbital flights. When asked why they didn't consider using a hybrid vehicle, NASA replied: 'The cost of development is too high for our budget. Plus, those batteries have to be replaced every 10 years at a cost of $2000 a piece. This is simply out of our price range.'
Astronauts are furious at the selection, stating the Metro's horrible acceleration and pathetic top speed. 'It used to take us 8 1/2 minutes to achieve orbit, now it's a 12 hour trip' It's not like there are any rest stops on the way. I'm sure they won't be planning any vacations on the moon anytime soon either.
I do have at least a good 8 years of experience in pro audio. While I DO use Windows for a fair amount of music production, I also use Linux quite a bit (mostly just because I prefer Linux to Windows). No, it's not as good at pro audio as Windows or OSX. No, it's not even on the most distant radar. Especially since it's only had a low-latency capable kernel for less than a year.
Down the line, who knows? 10 years ago, no one thought Linux would be where it's at now in the server market. It still happened. My comment is directed at people who respond to information like this with a 'why bother, give it up' type attitude. Without so many people putting their time and effort into projects like this, there would be NO options for music production in Linux (pro or not). Was Windows always worthy of a Pro studio? Was Mac always? I don't know many people who used a Mac II for producing pro audio. It takes time.
As for building a pro studio.. that's something we all have! As a matter of fact I do know how much it costs, and no licensing fees are not a factor. What did I say to give you an impression like that anyway? Well.. let's see.. if I was building a pro studio, I would get a friggin' Mac. For home/hobbyist use.. sorry some of us can't afford home pro audio studios and personal sound engineers.
Finally, if I'm a kid, you must be quite old. Maybe you should retire.
There are so few musicians who produce music with Linux, you can't really blame professional sound card makers for not taking the time to create linux drivers for them.
Since, there are no such drivers there can be only one solution to those creating software like Muse: give up. That's right, just give up! Don't bother creating full featured software studios on Linux!! Nobody really uses Linux with their Digidesign right? So it must be a waste of time creating something like this. There is no need to try and introduce sound production to Linux because you can already do it on Windows and OSX. In fact, let's all just STOP, and wait for professional sound card drivers to magically appear on Linux. I'm sure all of these companies will come to their senses and create drivers for a system that has no user base in their market.
Now that I think of it, I can't figure out why Linux was created in the first place. I mean.. Windows already existed and did everything people really NEEDED right? So why BOTHER creating Linux. What a waste of time that was. Now that I think about it we should just stop developing everything in Linux! Just use Windows! Don't like that?? What's wrong?? Can't you afford a friggin Mac you lamer?! What about those crazy free/openBSD people! Windows existed then too! They should have never bothered. OS9 was OK, Apple didn't really NEED that BSD code.
Oh wait! I forgot to mention shareware/freeware that's available for Windows too! Microsoft has their own version of most of that stuff.. so don't create that either! It's a waste of time. I hate that stuff. I'm getting rid of Gaim and going back to regular AIM.. I LOVE THOST POP-UPS!!!!
My conclusion is that from now on we should simply rely on the large scale hardware/software vendors to provide us with our needs. I can do everything I need on a Mac, so I'm going to take a second Morgage and get a spanking new G5. That will show those fools!
Yay! My first Troll!
Keep in mind that he left Microsoft before it became the Evile Empire that it is today. Back in those days, many people had reason to cheer M$. Unlike Macs of the time, you could FIX a dos computer rather than just get a new one once it started behaving erratically. Dos mode also allowed computers of the time to run much faster, displaying any window manager consumed a majority of the resources on those old machines. Gates obviously had his mind set on dominating the industry, but at least M$ had some quality products. I seriously doubt that modern day M$ would fund something like this.
Good ideas. Thanks :-)
Recently I've actually been trying to determine which would be better for new low cost servers, FreeBSD or a hardened Gentoo style Linux system. I like BOTH OS's (imagine that), and just want to use what works best for the application. Unfortunately, the net is flooded with fanatical cult-like debates and arguments that seem to only prove ignorance on both sides. Does anyone have any compelling reasons to use FreeBSD over modern Linux? Sure, FreeBSD has proven itself as being the best in the past and certainly isn't a poor choice, but I want to know what's best NOW. The above mentioned benchmarks favour Linux.. are there others to confirm this?
A google on All Computers seems to lead into oblivion. While, a small russian computer store of the same name is near the top of the list. Sounds to me like $500 Million may be more than their lifespan's total revenue. Apparently Intel is at fault for keeping this company of chip geniuses from gaining any sort of market presence what-so-ever. Intel must be to blame for the fact that this company came up with some amazingly trivial circuitry over a decade ago and has continued to produce such revolutionary products that no one has ever heard of them.
I downloaded the realplayer and I have to say that it is quite nice. Why is everyone complaining about it?? Does it matter so much that it's not open source? It is very lightweight and simplistic. It opens instantly and plays pretty much every type of common audio file. In fact, I see this becoming my prefered audio player. It is basic and intuitive and I don't have to squint to find buttons (a la XMMS). I particularly like it's gtk2 interface. GXine seems to be the only other common media player that uses gtk2, and it's a little too big and bulky for audio use (IMO). I'll have to try realplayer's video capabilities out sometime when I'm not at work... It's too bad that Real gets such a bantering from the open source community. This seems like a nice product.
While this review seems biased and certainly doesn't go very deep (it does seem more like a review of Nautilus than of gnome) it brings to light some of the many problems developing with the gnome project. Gnome seems to be moving in contridictory directions, and dominated by developers that are continuing a crusade against C++. They site performance reasons for this, but maintain a fairly bloated window manager. Sure it's not nearly as bloated as KDE, but for a group of developers that seem bent on performance, it's fairly slow.
Then you combine the fact that gnome applications are much more difficult and time consuming to develop than KDE apps, and you get a real lose/lose for gnome. They aren't really excelling at anything. KDE may be woefully slow, but at least it's easy to develope apps for and thus has a vast number of easy to use apps. Gnome/GTK have only a few nice (some very nice) apps available in comparison. Both KDE and gnome seem to have problems with navigation. But at least KDE has several well developed and extremely effective file managers (like Krusader).
What ARE the big advantages to using gnome?? There doesn't seem to be any anymore. I like the lightweight approach, so I use XFCE. Why would I want to use gnome?? I can think of reasons why I would want to move to KDE (and some reasons not to -mostly the fact that it's so slow), but unforutately I can't really think of any reasons to use gnome. Gnome developers need to figure out what they want their WM to be GOOD at! Being OK at everything won't work in the Linux world!
I believe that becoming a consistent member of an open source project is what made the difference for me. I was out of the industry for two years, but worked actively on an open source project for a majority of that time. My skills improved a great deal, and employers seemed to think it was about as close as you can get to "work experience" without actually having a job. I have a decent paying job now, and I think it is mostly due to this.
At the interview level, you need to be able to sell ANYTHING if you can get through an IT interview these days. Do some research on sales and marketing! Actually don't do some.. do a lot. Chances are, everyone else interviewing is just as qualified as you. You just need to be the one they like the most! Most of the time it comes down to.. OK we have all these great candidates, who would you most enjoy working with?
If you keep at it, you'll eventually get it. It took me two years, but it finally worked! That may not be comforting for someone who was recently layed off, but look at this way.. Do you want to server tables/deliver pizzas/*insert crappy job here* for the rest of your life or for two years??
It's seems that a lot of people are complaining about something that was seriously mis-reported. D CAN'T COMPILE C CODE!! (Sorry for shouting.. but I'm hoping to get peoples' attention). D can link to C binary code.. wow.. what a concept.. almost every programming language can do this. It's almost a requirement for any new language. Without it you would start with 0 code base, and no one will use it. The below text is taken directly from the article. Notice 'Binary Compatibility' and 'Link Compatible.'
Binary C Compatibility:
D programs can import and link against C code and libraries, providing D with free access to a huge amount of pre-written code. Note, however, that D is not link-compatible with C++, so pure C wrappers are required to access C++ code in D.
Personally, I've been praying for years for a language like this to get adopted. Why is it that I can only use full object oriented programming for web/network applications?! Sure.. I know you can do more than this with Java or C#, but is it really practical?? Usually it's just a massive drain on resources. If you need high performance, then you can't do better than C++. Unfortunately, C++ is a transitional language (just look at it's name..). A pure object oriented, fully compilable language that has no VM is desperately needed. I can't believe it's 2004, and such a thing still hasn't been adopted. I hope D (or something like it catches on.. As much as I loved it when it first came out, I'm sick of wrestling with C++ code.
Linux is simply taking the reverse path, focusing on security and stability first, and then trying to build improved usability on top of that. MacOS1-9 had the same problems really. A great and very user-friendly interface that was build upon an insecure and somewhat unstable base. Time has shown that the only way to fix this is to pretty much start over from scratch..