When I was at BYU in the late 90s, it was stated by several professors that CS was the most enrolled in and dropped out of major, so I agree that an increase in enrollment doesn't mean a whole lot. The meaningful number will be to see if there's a corresponding increase in the degrees awarded rate in 4 years.
The discussed email from ESR states that git has won the mindshare war and that Mercurial is "is not looking real healthy these days". So while I agree with everything you said, it appears that the general opinion does not.
Yes, when all the choices are bad that may be true, but competition is always a HUGE motivator. Take the recent events with gcc. It had been poking along before and then along came Clang/LLVM and now gcc has made imense strides.
That's nice in theory and usually true in practice, but not universally true. While not explicitly the same issue, this bug ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/eclipse/+bug/997461 ) highlights how even a large company like Google doesn't put in the effort to deal the sporatic shifts.
Code written for Android can't be run on another platform without rewriting large portions of the code. In essence, it's basically just the same sort of additions that Microsoft did and got tons of bad press about.
Except for the fact that Apple has also stood in the way of the adoption of Ogg Theora as a standard for the video tag, so they're doing just as much to prevent the dismissal of flash as they are usher it in (or you could be even more tinfoil hatish and say that they're just trying to replace one proprietary standard with another).
I don't see how someone who has received so much acclaim for his game design can completely miss the boat on a VERY popular game.
I've actually never played WoW (just don't have the time), but I imagine that the experience is much like Diablo on a grander scale. The enjoyment in a game like Diablo was far more complex than leveling up. The biggest driver for me was the social aspect of the game (playing together online, seeing how friends/others used resources to develop their character, etc).
I understand that the whole "RPG-style" of games like WoW/Diablo just isn't appealing to some people, but I don't see how a developer like this can completely misunderstand it.
It's the same reason that people don't leave a good tip to a waiter or other person in the service industry. Basically, they just don't see the value/hardwork that went into the "product" and since it's not required to pay, they don't. Anything else is just a lot of talk with little behind it.
Does it really make sense to spend so much talking about how big of a pain it makes coding for programmer, but then point out how easy it is for malware to get around it? Something about that just doesn't quite make sense.
Actually, Carmack did say that he thought it would never fully transition to raytracing. He said that rasterization would always stay a step ahead and could "emulate" or fake a lot of the effects that raytracing can pull off. He did say that a hybrid method showed the most promise, but he also spent the majority of the time talking about how his new idea (has some goofy name that I can't remember right now) would be the best option of all.
I agree with this completely (and I have seen minor versions of this in my job at a defense contractor), but I have to say that there's a certain amount of personal accountability that has to be taken by engineers/software developers(engineers)/anyone.
At times I have been pressured to get something done or let something pass, and sadly I have to admit that I've often given in. But as bad as this is, it's just as unethical for me to try and blame the problem solely on management/capitalism/any "invisible hand".
A guy in my ray-tracing class actually wrote his in Perl. It was a horrible idea, because when things got complex and everyone's C/C++ version was starting to take hours to render a scene, his would take days. Needless to say, he never got all of the required features working because of the insane debugging times, but I think he ended up passing the class just because the teacher felt bad for him.
Plus, some of the claims from http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/ about the "flaws" of C++ are just flat out wrong, so I wouldn't rely on that as too valid of an opinion.
We always here about how it's a different demographics buying the Wii, but are there actually statistics out there to back that up? And I doubt we'll ever see them, but I'd love to see what the actual playing time is for the different age groups.
I find it ironic that Google was recently praised for paying people to lobby for them, but if Microsoft pays bloggers, then that's just horrible. It's just the classic "not in my backyard" type of thing.
I find it ironic that everyone always used to say that the Gamecube failed because it didn't have the "hardcore" games like GTA and Halo, but now all of the sudden the Wii is successful because it has "family appeal". That argument just doesn't float if you ask me. I think that the Wii is popular because it's new, different, and has a controller that's more "inviting" than the average console controller (with a little bit of "fadness" thrown in for good measure), and not because it appeals to moms and old people or anything like that.
(And just for the record I'm a 360 fanboy and don't even own a Wii)
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When I was at BYU in the late 90s, it was stated by several professors that CS was the most enrolled in and dropped out of major, so I agree that an increase in enrollment doesn't mean a whole lot. The meaningful number will be to see if there's a corresponding increase in the degrees awarded rate in 4 years.
The discussed email from ESR states that git has won the mindshare war and that Mercurial is "is not looking real healthy these days". So while I agree with everything you said, it appears that the general opinion does not.
Yes, when all the choices are bad that may be true, but competition is always a HUGE motivator. Take the recent events with gcc. It had been poking along before and then along came Clang/LLVM and now gcc has made imense strides.
That's nice in theory and usually true in practice, but not universally true. While not explicitly the same issue, this bug ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/eclipse/+bug/997461 ) highlights how even a large company like Google doesn't put in the effort to deal the sporatic shifts.
Code written for Android can't be run on another platform without rewriting large portions of the code. In essence, it's basically just the same sort of additions that Microsoft did and got tons of bad press about.
The issue is that you can't take a phone into some areas, like into a test, and that's where a product like this comes into play.
Except for the fact that Apple has also stood in the way of the adoption of Ogg Theora as a standard for the video tag, so they're doing just as much to prevent the dismissal of flash as they are usher it in (or you could be even more tinfoil hatish and say that they're just trying to replace one proprietary standard with another).
The massive series of apps and developer support that's growing around Android will probably push Maemo out of the market.
Then give it a try: http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/
I don't see how someone who has received so much acclaim for his game design can completely miss the boat on a VERY popular game.
I've actually never played WoW (just don't have the time), but I imagine that the experience is much like Diablo on a grander scale. The enjoyment in a game like Diablo was far more complex than leveling up. The biggest driver for me was the social aspect of the game (playing together online, seeing how friends/others used resources to develop their character, etc).
I understand that the whole "RPG-style" of games like WoW/Diablo just isn't appealing to some people, but I don't see how a developer like this can completely misunderstand it.
It's the same reason that people don't leave a good tip to a waiter or other person in the service industry. Basically, they just don't see the value/hardwork that went into the "product" and since it's not required to pay, they don't. Anything else is just a lot of talk with little behind it.
Visual Studio's debugger is GREAT, and that's something that is VERY hard to give up.
The point wasn't that it was free, but that the cost was dramatically less with raytracing than it is with rasterization.
Does it really make sense to spend so much talking about how big of a pain it makes coding for programmer, but then point out how easy it is for malware to get around it? Something about that just doesn't quite make sense.
Actually, Carmack did say that he thought it would never fully transition to raytracing. He said that rasterization would always stay a step ahead and could "emulate" or fake a lot of the effects that raytracing can pull off. He did say that a hybrid method showed the most promise, but he also spent the majority of the time talking about how his new idea (has some goofy name that I can't remember right now) would be the best option of all.
Isn't that the point of capitalism/free markets? AMD can try one thing, Intel another, and then the market will decide which is the better option.
I agree with this completely (and I have seen minor versions of this in my job at a defense contractor), but I have to say that there's a certain amount of personal accountability that has to be taken by engineers/software developers(engineers)/anyone.
At times I have been pressured to get something done or let something pass, and sadly I have to admit that I've often given in. But as bad as this is, it's just as unethical for me to try and blame the problem solely on management/capitalism/any "invisible hand".
Or you could just use an email provider like GMail that has good spam filtering and let them worry about it.
A guy in my ray-tracing class actually wrote his in Perl. It was a horrible idea, because when things got complex and everyone's C/C++ version was starting to take hours to render a scene, his would take days. Needless to say, he never got all of the required features working because of the insane debugging times, but I think he ended up passing the class just because the teacher felt bad for him.
Plus, some of the claims from http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/ about the "flaws" of C++ are just flat out wrong, so I wouldn't rely on that as too valid of an opinion.
They should definitely put some labels on the pie charts next time, because it was next to impossible to tell which pie was for which console.
We always here about how it's a different demographics buying the Wii, but are there actually statistics out there to back that up? And I doubt we'll ever see them, but I'd love to see what the actual playing time is for the different age groups.
How about just making quitting count as a loss and then there's no incentive to quit even with rankings?
I find it ironic that Google was recently praised for paying people to lobby for them, but if Microsoft pays bloggers, then that's just horrible. It's just the classic "not in my backyard" type of thing.
I find it ironic that everyone always used to say that the Gamecube failed because it didn't have the "hardcore" games like GTA and Halo, but now all of the sudden the Wii is successful because it has "family appeal". That argument just doesn't float if you ask me. I think that the Wii is popular because it's new, different, and has a controller that's more "inviting" than the average console controller (with a little bit of "fadness" thrown in for good measure), and not because it appeals to moms and old people or anything like that.
(And just for the record I'm a 360 fanboy and don't even own a Wii)