Some are effectively just desktop apps, but some are quite big.
Python has never really been about speed, and for the client side code it's not important anyway, most of the time the app is just waiting for user input. A lot of the number crunching is done by the database server so all the app is doing is issuing a query, albeit often quite a complex one, and waiting for the results.
There are obviously major productivity benefits to programming in Python (and scripting languages in general) but you trade performance for these. There have been a couple of times when I've approached a large new project and half expected to end up recoding sections in C++, but for all the projects so far, the pure Python versions have performed as well if not better than the client had expected anyway, even on older hardware. The core libraries and many of the popular extensions are written in C++ these days, and those that aren't and become popular tend to be re-written before long as well.
I've personally found that Python scales as well as Java ever did, but then I've not really written anything in Java during the past two years, and performance etc. may have improved to the extent that the difference is now significant.
I'd second that. I've been using Python exclusively for the past year or more in commercial projects, and quite a bit on and off prior to that personally.
Combined with a good GUI toolkit (wxWidgets or for certain applications GTK+ and the wonderful Glade) and with a good database back-end (MySQL on the server and possibly SQLite for local data) you really can do pretty much anything very quickly and effectively. There are even some great free development tools (like DrPython) which are a joy to use.
You get to target GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac OSX with essentially the same source, and installing the Python and related runtimes is no more hassle than installing the.NET or Java runtimes. If deployment is a major issue, then it's simple enough to create and ship a single executable.
I've used it for developing everything from Point-of-Sale systems to document imaging and retrieval to accounting systems. There are quick applications for feeding data from legacy systems into new systems, batch processing of large amounts of data, as well as some pretty major fully bespoke applications. It really has proven to be a one toolset fits all solution for me.
Looked at and used Perl, Ruby and Lua for a while before decideding on Python. It just had that little something extra for me, and I've absolutely no regrets, but all four would bring you most of the same benefits, though you may find that Lua is lacking somewhat in add-on libraries at the moment.
MySQL is a perfectly good database in terms of performance and core features. There are plenty of industrial strength applications which make use of it, and for most purposes, the "missing" features are of very little relevance.
PHP however, whilst a good choice for internet/intranet development is far from appropriate for realtime user interfaces, which is presumably what is required here. It's grown up to be a very powerful embedded language for web-based applications, but has little or no use beyond this remit. Even with the GTK bindings, you're still trying to get a sqaure peg into a round hole - it might be possible, but it won't be easy and the results won't be pretty.
> When does spin doctoring cross the line and become false advertising?
Pretty much all of the time, but almost always just within the bounds of what is considered legal.
If simple un-deniable facts by themselves were enough to sell a product and allow a genuine and straightforward comparison between competing products, there'd be no need for spin doctoring. However, only the best product available at the time in each price bracket would win any volume of sales. If you had the second best product, you'd need to find a way of getting people to buy it from you instead - enter the marketing team and all their little helpers.
The simple truth is, that by tweaking test results it may result in additional sales, and from a business perspective, it's pretty much essential. At a very basic level, as long as you can replicate your results if required to do so, then they are valid from an advertising point of veiw.
As it is widely recognised that all manufacturers do this to at least some extent, the technically aware individual will place no real faith in benchmarks from the actual manufacturer and seek independent advice, probably from a trusted magazine or web-based resource, who will compare the products on a more level playing field and in more realistic situations. Not to say that these result are impartial, just that they are usually more realistic and so usually give a better comparison.
What you need to remember however, is that a large percentage of computer users out there don't know or care about the technology or companies involved, they simply want the most powerful XYZ for the money they have available. This is the area where clever advertising backed up by what may well be dubious benchmark results will invariably win business.
And America has even the slightest idea what is best for other countries? To do that, you would need to try and understand how other countries work, rather than just try and impose your own beliefs and approaches upon them, and historically, anyone trying to do that has had a rather short political career.
The Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse prior to Reagan's involvement, and had been for many years. You also need to remember that the Reagan administration's cold war activities also included shipping the CIA over to train and provide weapons and funding to Bin Laden et.al. (I know he wasn't specifically involved, but many of his contemporaries were) to defeat the Russians on their behalf.
To the best of my knowledge, and I take quite an interest in this, politically, there has been very little if any involvement in the affairs of other countries that was not undertaken for the direct benefit of the US.
It must be frustrating that all a candidate needs to do is stand on a baseball pitch in front of an American flag, speak in short simple sentences, and close every address with "God bless America" to stand a good chance of being voted in as president.
If you're suggesting that you don't want to be a part of a "universe" with a higher overall level of education, a love for ones country based upon knowledge of exactly what that country is doing and has done, and the acceptance of moderate levels of religious worship as equally valid, then that's a shame.
The world isn't just made up of the US and everyone else, but your politicians and media manipulators have nurtured exactly that attitude within the country for years as it serves them well. We all live on the same planet, and giving consideration to, and working with others is essential.
There's very little point in starting a debate, but the vast majority of the problems the US is facing right now are directly and demonstratably caused by its own actions. This goes way beyond who is resident in The White House, and the way things are now, I doubt solutions are to be reached anytime soon.
There have been many superb, well researched and very informative documentaries shown here in the UK over the recent months (and no, I don't count Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 among them) about just how manipulated the American public has been over the years. Whilst it goes on to some extent everywhere in the world, the degree to which you as a nation have been mislead and manipulated is astounding.
I'm based in the UK, and from here the entire thing seems a complete media based farce.
To the best of my knowledge, most people outside the US (and many within) think Bush is entirely incompetent. I've spoken to plenty of people from different areas of Europe and they all have the same opinion. With the coverage and analysis in the world media, America is quickly becoming a laughing stock. I'm not saying Kerry would improve matters, but keeping Bush certainly won't.
After the last election, I genuinely thought the US had voted in their first good candidate for assassination for many years. And how did they turn things around? By going to war. A sure fire way to improve a poor domestic economic situation, and a cause to get the masses behind. I know 9/11 was a sickening and devastating event (although a quick look at the history behind it puts things entirely in perspective) but the administration were just too keen to get a war started, it was after all just what they needed at the time.
Without wanting to be disrespectful, and I say this based entirely on conversations I've had with people in and from the US, only the uneducated, the blindly patriotic and the deeply religious are supporting Bush. He has been "marketed" specifically to these groups, and his people have done a very good job with someone who is, by almost all standards a poor man for the job.
All that said, Bush does look much more the part than Kerry. The scary things is, with the election being so media based, this may in itself win him additional votes.
The original Zaurus was a (computing) media attention grabber, and whilst it was released pretty much world-wide, it sold relatively few units because it had no real advantages over the other PDAs already out in the market, except that it ran Linux, and this resulted in little or no benefit for the average consumer. It was one for Linux geeks and those with an appetite for gadgets. So naturally, I bought one.
It's a great piece of kit, but as far as the world outside Japan is concerned, it hasn't evolved since the first "developer only" units were shipped, and so is now destined to be just another piece of computing history.
There has been very little attention from Sharp to the product line at all within europe, and I can only assume it's the same in the US. Even the Zaurus community, despite the enthusiasm, has been unable to make it anything more than an ageing niche market "geek gadget".
There have been a few new models in Japan, and they look marvelous. I know I'd have bought an officially released one, but it's been left to companies like ShirtPocket.com to import and localise (SIC, I'm european) them.
Even the most innovative and desireable new product will generally only have a six month initial sales period in which to make money before it has been eclipsed by newer kit. The only chance Sharp have of making any money from the Zaurus range is to release the products in Europe and the US around the same time as Japan, and it hasn't done so.
Now it's too late for everything but the latest mini-HD based device. Yet again, Sharp have on their hands a ground-breaking product, seemingly well designed and made, and very, very desireable, but unless it is released worldwide "whilst it's still hot" it's simply not going to make them any money elsewhere. The tech industry moves so quickly these days, that consumers in the rest of the world simply won't wait like they did back in the 80s & 90s.
This whole thing is compounded by Dell selling good quality, high spec kit for peanuts, which has completely destroyed the (already pretty low) profit margins to which the PDA manufacturers and retail chain were working. Dell are just doing what they've always done so very well, identifying a market and giving the consumer what they want a a great price, but it means there's no money to be made in PDAs anymore. As a result, even manufacturers like Sony who are generally good at marketting and supporting their products, have pulled out of selling PDAs in europe.
I specifically mentioned that Python had no equivalent to CPAN, and that this was a negative. Whilst the libraries themselves are scattered over the net, python.org has a package index which acts as a kind of simpler, but still useful version.
I've coded in Perl commercially, and know plenty of Perl programmers, many of which treat Perl a religion. There's certainly nothing wrong with that, but they all say the same when it comes to finding a library to do a specific job - whilst they are easy to find, there are often too many choices using often entirely different approaches, so it takes time to evaluate and decide upon the most appropriate one for you. Often the differences can be in style rather than functionality, and things being done in a fairly standard "Pythonic" is a big plus for Python programmers. Yes, there may be a couple of different options for specific libraries in Python, but you'll usually find that the interfacing and approach is very similar, they just have different goals.
I'm not interested in starting a Python vs Perl (or Ruby or Lua) flame-war. It's pointless, often tends to deteriorate into childishness and petty bitching (from both sides) and is therefore a waste of everybody's time.
One of my earlier points was that, due to the similarities in pretty much all modern scripting languages, trying to convince someone to move from one to another once they've started using it is difficult and often pointless.
All of the languages mentioned are useful and highly capable, but when I started looking for a scripting language to move pretty much all of my development over to, I was in the great position of having a month to evaluate and decide but approached the task with few preconceptions, except a suspicion that Perl would be my choice. The forums were of no help whatsoever, the threads would start off sensible and informative but without exception, quickly deteriorate into petty flame-wars. Not very useful.
I have absolutely no interest in sticking with one language where there are genuine gains to be had from switching to another. With this in mind, as recently as a month ago, I decided to write three versions of a small commercial project (using MySQL, SQLite, GTK+, COM, serial and parallel port access) in Python, Perl and Ruby. There was no GTK+ library for Lua and as I'd used it for the other three using wxWindows wouldn't have given a good comparison. After this I still decided that for what I do, Python is the most productive and straight-forward option by a long way. But that's just me.
For day to day stuff, I'll continue to use Python. It works very well for me.
In a few weeks time I'll be writing a set of administration scripts for a GNU/Linux system, and I'll be using Perl for these. It's the best choice for this kind of work.
As I've mentioned, Lua is a superb choice for embedded scripting, and quite a bit easier to implement than Python in these cases, but so far I've not needed to do this. When I do, I have no doubt I'll be using Lua.
I know Ruby has some nice concepts, and it may be that there are more libraries available than I was able to find the last time I needed any, but I simply can't find a good reason to use it for any of the above, and so I don't. It's certainly not that I don't like or appreciate it, I just haven't come across a situation where it would do a specific job better than one of the above.
And before anyone suggests that I could use Ruby to cover all of the above scenarios, I could also use Python for the same, but I truly believe it's horses-for-courses. If a system such as GNU/Linux already comes with Perl it makes sense to use that if the code is only ever to be run on GNU/Linux, and Lua was designed from the outset with embedding in mind, so not surprisingly it's very good in this area.
When it comes to being useful for cross-platform development of client-side applications which is my bread-and-butter stuff, then Python has proven time and time again to be a better, more productive option for me. Having an interactive mode and basic IDE (IDLE) built in also mades it useful for quick scripts.
Each to his/her own, and long may we have the choice of several good scripting languages.
One of my earlier points was that there has to be a good reason to move from one langauge to another, and for most people there is nothing lacking in the langauge they are using, so a change makes very little sense.
Blocks and lambdas may well be a killer feature of the Ruby language for you, but I've coded in plenty of different languages over a period of 20+ years, using most of them in a commercial environment, and haven't needed or ever felt the desire to use them. So for me they're not a reason to change. I doubt I'd actually use them if they were implemented identically in Python.
I'm not slagging off Ruby, it's a more modern langauge than either Python or Perl and for someone new to scripting languages I'd certainly suggest they take a look at it, but for me, and I suspect many others using one of the other languages, there is just no compelling reason to use it over any of the others, in fact there are things which are less straight-forward, but all languages have their benefits and deficiencies.
There are great projects and libraries popping up all over the place. With processing power constantly increasing and flexbility and speed of development being major factors these days, it's a boom-time for the scripting languages and an exciting time to be using them. There are really very few situations where I'd consider using anything else.
As always, it really is a case of what works for you, and I'd certainly never suggest to someone who's happy with their current language of choice that they change unless they wanted/needed a specific feature or library.
I've no interest in starting a Python vs Perl/Ruby/Lua debate, it's been done to death and very quickly descends into petty childishness on both sides. Let's just be glad we've all found languages which serve our purposes well, and raise a glass quietly amongst the din in the pub this evening to acknowledge the fact.
Although I've used seeming every language under the sun at some point during the past 20+ years, my language of choice for most projects these days is Python.
As a background to my choice, here's what I use it for:
I tend to write primarily for the Win32 platform and most of my applications have GUI front-ends they speak to MySQL databases, and often also control third party applications via COM. Aside from the COM stuff (the apps I'm controlling are only available for Win32 anyway) my software is fully cross-platform which is desireable. I love and use GNU/Linux extensively, and am starting to see an interest from the SME market which is encouraging.
I've used Python a lot and Perl a fair bit, plus I've looked at and thoroughly expected to fall in love with Ruby and Lua. I didn't.
I've realised that all four languages are so similar in many respects, that it's very difficult to convince a person using one to convert to another unless they have a very specific need. So it's just not worth trying.
If the language you are using does the job for you, then stick with it. Once you know the work-arounds for its deficiencies (and they all have them) then there is even less reason to change.
Trying to be objective, here's how I find each of the languages:
Python - Extremely easy to pick up, which is actually good for experienced programmers as well, but at the same time very flexible and powerful. Very readable and easily maintainable code. Good range of libraries (but nowhere near as many as Perl) which all stick closely to a well established "pythonic" way of doing things. You don't have to choose from a dozen different libraries that all claim to do the same job. The interactive shell is also remarkably useful for experimentation and debugging. Most good programmers indent their code anyway, and I don't know anyone that found the forced indentation a problem unless they were deliberately being arguamentative. The concept of packages is very simple and neat - you don't need to do anything special to allow importing of your code. Object orientation is very flexible, straight-forward and powerful. There are a large number of precompiled libraries with installers for Win32 platforms - don't ever underestimate how important this is in when using scripting languages in the current commercial environment. Extensive and uniform use of dot notation. Good range of freely available cross-platform IDEs. Like most Python bindings, those to GUI libraries are generally much easier to work with than the original C libraries.
Perl - Very powerful but extensive use of special characters rather than keywords can tend to result in code which needs reading several times to fully comprehend. Having built-in regular expressions is both useful and powerful, but only adds to the problem of making code less readable. Th eobject orientated aspects of the language are very much bolted on, and far from elegant. Functionaly they're quite capable, but certainly not pretty. It's very easy to code in your own style with several ways of doing the same thing, not necessarily a bad thing, but it does means there is more to learn of the core language if you want to be confident about being able to maintain code written by others. You do feel that you have flexibility in your choice of coding style which is always nice. Immense number of additional libraries, available from one source - the wonderful CPAN - but there is also a good deal of duplication, and you need to spend time evaluating the options to find one that has the features you need and works the way you'd like. Packages have to be written or at least bundled up as such. That said, it's available by default on *nix systems, it's also very closely tied into the operating system and shell which makes OS related stuff in Perl a breeze. Win32 support is available, but Perl is only truly at home in a *nix environment. The bindings to most cross platform GUIs are aften more complicated and difficult to use than the C equivalents.
The suggestion here is that the industry is failing because of music piracy over P2P networks and the internet.
From most of the comments here, I suspect that those posting get most of their music via P2P systems, and that is entirely up to them, but the death of music retailer has long been on the cards.
Over the years many of the best local indie music stores have closed down due to commercial pressure from the major players. This was going on, and most went out of business long before the impact of the internet. Back then we were all on 56K modems or slower.
I loved my local indie store, and I felt I got superb service from them. The staff became friends who I trusted and could rely upon, and as they got to know me, they would suggest new music they thought I'd like. Usually they were right, and my experience and exposure to music in general expanded significantly. I bought music habitually, to the extent that some weekends I didn't have any money left to go out drinking. It's not that I couldn't get copies from my friends, music was something to be treasured and a good music collection was something to be proud of.
With the indies gone, I opted to buy my music where it was cheapest - online retailers such as Amazon - but I still bought it. I think many other people did the same, and this in itself was an indication of how things were going. I doubt that online CD sales took business away from indies in itself, but more that as the small independent music retailers and the added value they provided disappeared, customers shifted to buying from the likes of Amazon.
Nobody (except possibly the staff, and even then I'm not certain) cares about the fate of the large "faceless" music retailing corporations, no matter how good they may be. There is no personal interaction, and they certainly present a less convenient way to purchase music. Just trying to find what you want is often a problem, and then you invariably have to queue in order to pay.
Let's compare that to buying on the the internet via the iTunes Music Store and the like. Yup, they're still big faceless corporations, but they're making it easy for you to find what you what by flexible searches and cross referencing. I've discovered and bought plenty of new music just from links to bands I'd never have found of considered when buying in HMV. And the fact that you can listen to 30 seconds of a track means that music from brand new bands isn't such a risky purchase, you've already a pretty good idea of what you're getting. You can shop whenever it's convenient, you're not forced to buy an entire album just for the one song you want, you can burn a CD if you really want one for the car, and even though the entire experience is many times more convenient and efficient, you actually pay less for the music!
I appreciate that P2P is having an impact on sales of music, but I suspect that if it weren't for illegal music downloads, many of those using such networks would simply be getting copies (used to be tape, now it would be CDR) from friends which is what used to happen back in the 80s.
What the RIAA are desperately clinging onto and defending is an approach to music distribution which has been around and has remained almost unchanged for 40+ years. Change is long overdue, and legitimate online purchasing of music is the way forward for so many reasons it's quite simply inevitable.
You'll never stop people copying music, and the internet simply makes the entire process quicker and more convenient. The only way to save the music industry is to make music distribution quicker and more convenient as well, the infrastructure is already available, just go with it.
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Some are effectively just desktop apps, but some are quite big.
Python has never really been about speed, and for the client side code it's not important anyway, most of the time the app is just waiting for user input. A lot of the number crunching is done by the database server so all the app is doing is issuing a query, albeit often quite a complex one, and waiting for the results.
There are obviously major productivity benefits to programming in Python (and scripting languages in general) but you trade performance for these. There have been a couple of times when I've approached a large new project and half expected to end up recoding sections in C++, but for all the projects so far, the pure Python versions have performed as well if not better than the client had expected anyway, even on older hardware. The core libraries and many of the popular extensions are written in C++ these days, and those that aren't and become popular tend to be re-written before long as well.
I've personally found that Python scales as well as Java ever did, but then I've not really written anything in Java during the past two years, and performance etc. may have improved to the extent that the difference is now significant.
I'd second that. I've been using Python exclusively for the past year or more in commercial projects, and quite a bit on and off prior to that personally.
.NET or Java runtimes. If deployment is a major issue, then it's simple enough to create and ship a single executable.
Combined with a good GUI toolkit (wxWidgets or for certain applications GTK+ and the wonderful Glade) and with a good database back-end (MySQL on the server and possibly SQLite for local data) you really can do pretty much anything very quickly and effectively. There are even some great free development tools (like DrPython) which are a joy to use.
You get to target GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac OSX with essentially the same source, and installing the Python and related runtimes is no more hassle than installing the
I've used it for developing everything from Point-of-Sale systems to document imaging and retrieval to accounting systems. There are quick applications for feeding data from legacy systems into new systems, batch processing of large amounts of data, as well as some pretty major fully bespoke applications. It really has proven to be a one toolset fits all solution for me.
Looked at and used Perl, Ruby and Lua for a while before decideding on Python. It just had that little something extra for me, and I've absolutely no regrets, but all four would bring you most of the same benefits, though you may find that Lua is lacking somewhat in add-on libraries at the moment.
So you're a MS-SQL guy then?
MySQL is a perfectly good database in terms of performance and core features. There are plenty of industrial strength applications which make use of it, and for most purposes, the "missing" features are of very little relevance.
PHP however, whilst a good choice for internet/intranet development is far from appropriate for realtime user interfaces, which is presumably what is required here. It's grown up to be a very powerful embedded language for web-based applications, but has little or no use beyond this remit. Even with the GTK bindings, you're still trying to get a sqaure peg into a round hole - it might be possible, but it won't be easy and the results won't be pretty.
> When does spin doctoring cross the line and become false advertising?
Pretty much all of the time, but almost always just within the bounds of what is considered legal.
If simple un-deniable facts by themselves were enough to sell a product and allow a genuine and straightforward comparison between competing products, there'd be no need for spin doctoring. However, only the best product available at the time in each price bracket would win any volume of sales. If you had the second best product, you'd need to find a way of getting people to buy it from you instead - enter the marketing team and all their little helpers.
The simple truth is, that by tweaking test results it may result in additional sales, and from a business perspective, it's pretty much essential. At a very basic level, as long as you can replicate your results if required to do so, then they are valid from an advertising point of veiw.
As it is widely recognised that all manufacturers do this to at least some extent, the technically aware individual will place no real faith in benchmarks from the actual manufacturer and seek independent advice, probably from a trusted magazine or web-based resource, who will compare the products on a more level playing field and in more realistic situations. Not to say that these result are impartial, just that they are usually more realistic and so usually give a better comparison.
What you need to remember however, is that a large percentage of computer users out there don't know or care about the technology or companies involved, they simply want the most powerful XYZ for the money they have available. This is the area where clever advertising backed up by what may well be dubious benchmark results will invariably win business.
And America has even the slightest idea what is best for other countries? To do that, you would need to try and understand how other countries work, rather than just try and impose your own beliefs and approaches upon them, and historically, anyone trying to do that has had a rather short political career.
The Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse prior to Reagan's involvement, and had been for many years. You also need to remember that the Reagan administration's cold war activities also included shipping the CIA over to train and provide weapons and funding to Bin Laden et.al. (I know he wasn't specifically involved, but many of his contemporaries were) to defeat the Russians on their behalf.
To the best of my knowledge, and I take quite an interest in this, politically, there has been very little if any involvement in the affairs of other countries that was not undertaken for the direct benefit of the US.
It must be frustrating that all a candidate needs to do is stand on a baseball pitch in front of an American flag, speak in short simple sentences, and close every address with "God bless America" to stand a good chance of being voted in as president.
If you're suggesting that you don't want to be a part of a "universe" with a higher overall level of education, a love for ones country based upon knowledge of exactly what that country is doing and has done, and the acceptance of moderate levels of religious worship as equally valid, then that's a shame.
The world isn't just made up of the US and everyone else, but your politicians and media manipulators have nurtured exactly that attitude within the country for years as it serves them well. We all live on the same planet, and giving consideration to, and working with others is essential.
There's very little point in starting a debate, but the vast majority of the problems the US is facing right now are directly and demonstratably caused by its own actions. This goes way beyond who is resident in The White House, and the way things are now, I doubt solutions are to be reached anytime soon.
There have been many superb, well researched and very informative documentaries shown here in the UK over the recent months (and no, I don't count Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 among them) about just how manipulated the American public has been over the years. Whilst it goes on to some extent everywhere in the world, the degree to which you as a nation have been mislead and manipulated is astounding.
I'm based in the UK, and from here the entire thing seems a complete media based farce.
To the best of my knowledge, most people outside the US (and many within) think Bush is entirely incompetent. I've spoken to plenty of people from different areas of Europe and they all have the same opinion. With the coverage and analysis in the world media, America is quickly becoming a laughing stock. I'm not saying Kerry would improve matters, but keeping Bush certainly won't.
After the last election, I genuinely thought the US had voted in their first good candidate for assassination for many years. And how did they turn things around? By going to war. A sure fire way to improve a poor domestic economic situation, and a cause to get the masses behind. I know 9/11 was a sickening and devastating event (although a quick look at the history behind it puts things entirely in perspective) but the administration were just too keen to get a war started, it was after all just what they needed at the time.
Without wanting to be disrespectful, and I say this based entirely on conversations I've had with people in and from the US, only the uneducated, the blindly patriotic and the deeply religious are supporting Bush. He has been "marketed" specifically to these groups, and his people have done a very good job with someone who is, by almost all standards a poor man for the job.
All that said, Bush does look much more the part than Kerry. The scary things is, with the election being so media based, this may in itself win him additional votes.
...how to market and support the product.
The original Zaurus was a (computing) media attention grabber, and whilst it was released pretty much world-wide, it sold relatively few units because it had no real advantages over the other PDAs already out in the market, except that it ran Linux, and this resulted in little or no benefit for the average consumer. It was one for Linux geeks and those with an appetite for gadgets. So naturally, I bought one.
It's a great piece of kit, but as far as the world outside Japan is concerned, it hasn't evolved since the first "developer only" units were shipped, and so is now destined to be just another piece of computing history.
There has been very little attention from Sharp to the product line at all within europe, and I can only assume it's the same in the US. Even the Zaurus community, despite the enthusiasm, has been unable to make it anything more than an ageing niche market "geek gadget".
There have been a few new models in Japan, and they look marvelous. I know I'd have bought an officially released one, but it's been left to companies like ShirtPocket.com to import and localise (SIC, I'm european) them.
Even the most innovative and desireable new product will generally only have a six month initial sales period in which to make money before it has been eclipsed by newer kit. The only chance Sharp have of making any money from the Zaurus range is to release the products in Europe and the US around the same time as Japan, and it hasn't done so.
Now it's too late for everything but the latest mini-HD based device. Yet again, Sharp have on their hands a ground-breaking product, seemingly well designed and made, and very, very desireable, but unless it is released worldwide "whilst it's still hot" it's simply not going to make them any money elsewhere. The tech industry moves so quickly these days, that consumers in the rest of the world simply won't wait like they did back in the 80s & 90s.
This whole thing is compounded by Dell selling good quality, high spec kit for peanuts, which has completely destroyed the (already pretty low) profit margins to which the PDA manufacturers and retail chain were working. Dell are just doing what they've always done so very well, identifying a market and giving the consumer what they want a a great price, but it means there's no money to be made in PDAs anymore. As a result, even manufacturers like Sony who are generally good at marketting and supporting their products, have pulled out of selling PDAs in europe.
The above post was all nicely formatted into paragraphs when I typed it. Look at it now. Not sure how that happened, but hopefully you can read it.
I specifically mentioned that Python had no equivalent to CPAN, and that this was a negative. Whilst the libraries themselves are scattered over the net, python.org has a package index which acts as a kind of simpler, but still useful version. I've coded in Perl commercially, and know plenty of Perl programmers, many of which treat Perl a religion. There's certainly nothing wrong with that, but they all say the same when it comes to finding a library to do a specific job - whilst they are easy to find, there are often too many choices using often entirely different approaches, so it takes time to evaluate and decide upon the most appropriate one for you. Often the differences can be in style rather than functionality, and things being done in a fairly standard "Pythonic" is a big plus for Python programmers. Yes, there may be a couple of different options for specific libraries in Python, but you'll usually find that the interfacing and approach is very similar, they just have different goals. I'm not interested in starting a Python vs Perl (or Ruby or Lua) flame-war. It's pointless, often tends to deteriorate into childishness and petty bitching (from both sides) and is therefore a waste of everybody's time. One of my earlier points was that, due to the similarities in pretty much all modern scripting languages, trying to convince someone to move from one to another once they've started using it is difficult and often pointless. All of the languages mentioned are useful and highly capable, but when I started looking for a scripting language to move pretty much all of my development over to, I was in the great position of having a month to evaluate and decide but approached the task with few preconceptions, except a suspicion that Perl would be my choice. The forums were of no help whatsoever, the threads would start off sensible and informative but without exception, quickly deteriorate into petty flame-wars. Not very useful. I have absolutely no interest in sticking with one language where there are genuine gains to be had from switching to another. With this in mind, as recently as a month ago, I decided to write three versions of a small commercial project (using MySQL, SQLite, GTK+, COM, serial and parallel port access) in Python, Perl and Ruby. There was no GTK+ library for Lua and as I'd used it for the other three using wxWindows wouldn't have given a good comparison. After this I still decided that for what I do, Python is the most productive and straight-forward option by a long way. But that's just me. For day to day stuff, I'll continue to use Python. It works very well for me. In a few weeks time I'll be writing a set of administration scripts for a GNU/Linux system, and I'll be using Perl for these. It's the best choice for this kind of work. As I've mentioned, Lua is a superb choice for embedded scripting, and quite a bit easier to implement than Python in these cases, but so far I've not needed to do this. When I do, I have no doubt I'll be using Lua. I know Ruby has some nice concepts, and it may be that there are more libraries available than I was able to find the last time I needed any, but I simply can't find a good reason to use it for any of the above, and so I don't. It's certainly not that I don't like or appreciate it, I just haven't come across a situation where it would do a specific job better than one of the above. And before anyone suggests that I could use Ruby to cover all of the above scenarios, I could also use Python for the same, but I truly believe it's horses-for-courses. If a system such as GNU/Linux already comes with Perl it makes sense to use that if the code is only ever to be run on GNU/Linux, and Lua was designed from the outset with embedding in mind, so not surprisingly it's very good in this area. When it comes to being useful for cross-platform development of client-side applications which is my bread-and-butter stuff, then Python has proven time and time again to be a better, more productive option for me. Having an interactive mode and basic IDE (IDLE) built in also mades it useful for quick scripts. Each to his/her own, and long may we have the choice of several good scripting languages.
One of my earlier points was that there has to be a good reason to move from one langauge to another, and for most people there is nothing lacking in the langauge they are using, so a change makes very little sense. Blocks and lambdas may well be a killer feature of the Ruby language for you, but I've coded in plenty of different languages over a period of 20+ years, using most of them in a commercial environment, and haven't needed or ever felt the desire to use them. So for me they're not a reason to change. I doubt I'd actually use them if they were implemented identically in Python. I'm not slagging off Ruby, it's a more modern langauge than either Python or Perl and for someone new to scripting languages I'd certainly suggest they take a look at it, but for me, and I suspect many others using one of the other languages, there is just no compelling reason to use it over any of the others, in fact there are things which are less straight-forward, but all languages have their benefits and deficiencies. There are great projects and libraries popping up all over the place. With processing power constantly increasing and flexbility and speed of development being major factors these days, it's a boom-time for the scripting languages and an exciting time to be using them. There are really very few situations where I'd consider using anything else. As always, it really is a case of what works for you, and I'd certainly never suggest to someone who's happy with their current language of choice that they change unless they wanted/needed a specific feature or library. I've no interest in starting a Python vs Perl/Ruby/Lua debate, it's been done to death and very quickly descends into petty childishness on both sides. Let's just be glad we've all found languages which serve our purposes well, and raise a glass quietly amongst the din in the pub this evening to acknowledge the fact.
Although I've used seeming every language under the sun at some point during the past 20+ years, my language of choice for most projects these days is Python.
As a background to my choice, here's what I use it for:
I tend to write primarily for the Win32 platform and most of my applications have GUI front-ends they speak to MySQL databases, and often also control third party applications via COM. Aside from the COM stuff (the apps I'm controlling are only available for Win32 anyway) my software is fully cross-platform which is desireable. I love and use GNU/Linux extensively, and am starting to see an interest from the SME market which is encouraging.
I've used Python a lot and Perl a fair bit, plus I've looked at and thoroughly expected to fall in love with Ruby and Lua. I didn't.
I've realised that all four languages are so similar in many respects, that it's very difficult to convince a person using one to convert to another unless they have a very specific need. So it's just not worth trying.
If the language you are using does the job for you, then stick with it. Once you know the work-arounds for its deficiencies (and they all have them) then there is even less reason to change.
Trying to be objective, here's how I find each of the languages:
Python - Extremely easy to pick up, which is actually good for experienced programmers as well, but at the same time very flexible and powerful. Very readable and easily maintainable code. Good range of libraries (but nowhere near as many as Perl) which all stick closely to a well established "pythonic" way of doing things. You don't have to choose from a dozen different libraries that all claim to do the same job. The interactive shell is also remarkably useful for experimentation and debugging. Most good programmers indent their code anyway, and I don't know anyone that found the forced indentation a problem unless they were deliberately being arguamentative. The concept of packages is very simple and neat - you don't need to do anything special to allow importing of your code. Object orientation is very flexible, straight-forward and powerful. There are a large number of precompiled libraries with installers for Win32 platforms - don't ever underestimate how important this is in when using scripting languages in the current commercial environment. Extensive and uniform use of dot notation. Good range of freely available cross-platform IDEs. Like most Python bindings, those to GUI libraries are generally much easier to work with than the original C libraries.
Perl - Very powerful but extensive use of special characters rather than keywords can tend to result in code which needs reading several times to fully comprehend. Having built-in regular expressions is both useful and powerful, but only adds to the problem of making code less readable. Th eobject orientated aspects of the language are very much bolted on, and far from elegant. Functionaly they're quite capable, but certainly not pretty. It's very easy to code in your own style with several ways of doing the same thing, not necessarily a bad thing, but it does means there is more to learn of the core language if you want to be confident about being able to maintain code written by others. You do feel that you have flexibility in your choice of coding style which is always nice. Immense number of additional libraries, available from one source - the wonderful CPAN - but there is also a good deal of duplication, and you need to spend time evaluating the options to find one that has the features you need and works the way you'd like. Packages have to be written or at least bundled up as such. That said, it's available by default on *nix systems, it's also very closely tied into the operating system and shell which makes OS related stuff in Perl a breeze. Win32 support is available, but Perl is only truly at home in a *nix environment. The bindings to most cross platform GUIs are aften more complicated and difficult to use than the C equivalents.
Ruby -
The suggestion here is that the industry is failing because of music piracy over P2P networks and the internet.
From most of the comments here, I suspect that those posting get most of their music via P2P systems, and that is entirely up to them, but the death of music retailer has long been on the cards.
Over the years many of the best local indie music stores have closed down due to commercial pressure from the major players. This was going on, and most went out of business long before the impact of the internet. Back then we were all on 56K modems or slower.
I loved my local indie store, and I felt I got superb service from them. The staff became friends who I trusted and could rely upon, and as they got to know me, they would suggest new music they thought I'd like. Usually they were right, and my experience and exposure to music in general expanded significantly. I bought music habitually, to the extent that some weekends I didn't have any money left to go out drinking. It's not that I couldn't get copies from my friends, music was something to be treasured and a good music collection was something to be proud of.
With the indies gone, I opted to buy my music where it was cheapest - online retailers such as Amazon - but I still bought it. I think many other people did the same, and this in itself was an indication of how things were going. I doubt that online CD sales took business away from indies in itself, but more that as the small independent music retailers and the added value they provided disappeared, customers shifted to buying from the likes of Amazon.
Nobody (except possibly the staff, and even then I'm not certain) cares about the fate of the large "faceless" music retailing corporations, no matter how good they may be. There is no personal interaction, and they certainly present a less convenient way to purchase music. Just trying to find what you want is often a problem, and then you invariably have to queue in order to pay.
Let's compare that to buying on the the internet via the iTunes Music Store and the like. Yup, they're still big faceless corporations, but they're making it easy for you to find what you what by flexible searches and cross referencing. I've discovered and bought plenty of new music just from links to bands I'd never have found of considered when buying in HMV. And the fact that you can listen to 30 seconds of a track means that music from brand new bands isn't such a risky purchase, you've already a pretty good idea of what you're getting. You can shop whenever it's convenient, you're not forced to buy an entire album just for the one song you want, you can burn a CD if you really want one for the car, and even though the entire experience is many times more convenient and efficient, you actually pay less for the music!
I appreciate that P2P is having an impact on sales of music, but I suspect that if it weren't for illegal music downloads, many of those using such networks would simply be getting copies (used to be tape, now it would be CDR) from friends which is what used to happen back in the 80s.
What the RIAA are desperately clinging onto and defending is an approach to music distribution which has been around and has remained almost unchanged for 40+ years. Change is long overdue, and legitimate online purchasing of music is the way forward for so many reasons it's quite simply inevitable.
You'll never stop people copying music, and the internet simply makes the entire process quicker and more convenient. The only way to save the music industry is to make music distribution quicker and more convenient as well, the infrastructure is already available, just go with it.