"Remember when I suggested The Naked and Famous to you like three years ago? Oh, you don't? That's funny, this e-mail says otherwise."
Meh. The far more felicitous response is "Damn, I sure meant to." Conversations with friends -- and especially friends one is romantically involved with -- shouldn't sound like courtroom transcripts.
I keep talking to developers that code on OSX and I keep having the same question:
You're not going to be deploying any of that code on OSX, your target is almost always going to be Linux. So why not just develop on Linux?
It's a reasonable question.
For me it's really that I make money writing code; I haven't figured out how to get paid for configuring my laptop, so I'd prefer not to spend time on it. Also, work has no issues handing me an iMac but would get testy if I started running Linux on their network... I realize that's silly but it's not a fight I'm interested in having. Once that stake is in the ground it makes sense to me to keep the environment homogeneous. Plus there's software I really do find useful: File Vault, Time Machine, iTunes, Omnigraffle, Skype, Live, Logic, iPhoto, and so on. I'm sure there are Linux alternatives but there's a cost associated with switching that I would find very expensive. So although the hardware might be more expensive than the alternatives (and again, even if it's $1k over the life of the machine is that a lot?), the operating costs are -- for me -- cheaper.
If I'd ever run into serious issues moving code between Linux and OS X I'd rethink it but I'm not sure I can remember a time when functional tests passed or failed in one environment but not the other. It all gets rerun in integration testing anyway, so even if something cropped up it'd be more of a curiosity than a production issue. I wouldn't run serious load, capacity, or performance testing on my desktop no matter what the OS, so that's a wash. I could imagine cases where this isn't so easy but apparently that's not the kind of development I do.
I'm not trying to sway anyone. It works well for me and has proven a profitable choice, that's all I really care.
Macs were a great unix desktop ten years ago, now they just kind of blow.
I'm curious... what's changed? I get a lot of mileage out of OS X as a developer workstation and am honestly wondering what I'd gain by switching back to Linux.
I know there's a lot of talk about cost but that's irrelevant to me, $1k this way or that over the life of a computer just doesn't matter much. There seems to be discussion about the "walled garden" but at least for what I'm doing (Erlang, Scala, Ruby, Lisp, Postgres, MySQL, Emacs, &c.) I've never run into an issue. Nor has there ever been much of an issue deploying to Linux once the code's written.
- Thomas Pynchon: Against the Day, Gravity's Rainbow... if you were forced to read The Crying of Lot 49 in school, give Pynchon another chance, he gets much better.
- Anything by David Foster Wallace. Although not all his work is not directly mathematical, his interest in math influences the way he writes. Infinite Jest is a fabulous read.
- Georges Perec: Life, A User's Manual. The Oulipo movement (of which Perec's a member) let algorithms directly influence the text (as well crop up in their stories). Perec is good, Calvino, Queneau, and Mathews are also Oulipo members readily available in English.
- Paul Verhaeghen: Omega Minor... more science than math, still, a very engaging read.
(And although not mathematical at all, if you liked Crypto, you'd probably like Eco's Foucault's Pendulum.)
Oh, you mean the things that didn't work with C back in 1988 and didn't work with C++ in 1994 and didn't work with Perl in 1998 and didn't work with Java in 2003 and didn't work with C# in 2008 won't work with Ruby in 2011? Gosh, it's almost like all that prior experience is transferrable somehow, if only we could find some commonality.
I live in the south, and in general, when not in a the presence of black people, the term is still used freely as a synonym for a black person. And no...this is not a bunch of mouth breathing, uneducated rednecks. On the contrary, they are from all walks of life, and most that I am speaking off first knowledge of, are wealthy, well educated and often in places of power (yes, even governmental).
"They" may be well educated and wealthy, but "they" are also bigots. If it's not offensive, why only "when not in a the presence of black people"? What are you all afraid of?
The "it's only a word" non-argument only makes sense if the words don't have meaning. Once they're stand-ins for concepts they're no longer "just words." Didn't you learn anything about semiotics in school?
Consider a drum, xylophone, small guitar... that sort of thing. Kids love shit that makes noise, exposing them to music is no bad thing, and it will drive your siblings crazy. Win, win, win. We bought my GF's nephew a drum for Xmas when he was a little kid; he's now in his second year at Berklee. It's probably not a direct correlation, but the exposure can't have hurt.
If we can set aside the fact that this is a cult leader who likes to play dress-up (hard, I agree), it might be that his statements have some merit. I mean, Twitter isn't actual communication, the people on Facebook aren't really friends, a half a dozen regularly read blogs do not comprise a realistic worldview, and so on. There's so much technical mediation of the real world nowadays that it's not like you have to look far to find someone who doesn't believe it's true unless his phone tells him about it. (Or, worse, who can't experience something without twittering it.)
None of those languages have anything like the CPAN, despite saying for years "We should build something like the CPAN."
If this were the only true assertion you made (and it's not) it's reason enough to seriously consider Perl. I'd love to use Ruby more (it's a fun language, I like the OO, distributed and multithreaded programs are easy to write) but the libraries are lacking (as is easy library management).
Makes you figure there's a reason (La)TeX is still popular too, huh?
I have worked in company where 90% of people used Emacs. And literally nobody could customize it. They had ~120K init.el from somebody else, it got copied all over the company, everybody used and nobody had a clue what was in it.
I also knew real pro Emacs user who knew pretty much all shortcuts and modes of the Emacs. But he also hardly ever tried to configure it: he tried it in past, failed and learned to live with the defaults instead.
With respect, I'm not sure either of these issues are the fault of the software.
For instance, the default Apache httpd.conf reads:
# Do NOT simply read the instructions in here without understanding # what they do. They're here only as hints or reminders. If you are unsure # consult the online docs. You have been warned.
I suspect that a similar warning may have been missing from the init.el that was being passed around.
Of course, emacs-lisp doesn't look much like C (or a language whose syntax derived from C), so there's certainly some getting over the parenthesis and function-first syntax. After that hurdle (and a bit of understanding what a symbol is and how to quote a list), it's just a matter of looking up unfamiliar functions (online, with C-h f), isn't it?
Or the mythical sages of Emacs configuration left their caves once and enlightened us all.
I yet to see a single Emacs user who has written the.init.el her/himself - not grabbed some decade old copy off the net.
It's probably just me, but these statements seem contradictory.
Seriously, emacs users are actually a really helpful bunch, check out the emacs wiki for instance. Or consider the amount of effort that's gone into making the customization system (M-x customize) easy for both end users to use and emacs-lisp developers to incorporate into their extensions. Or the quality (and price!) of the Emacs manual,Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp, or Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
Emacs users might be perceived as elitist or something, but the feeling I've always had is that it's a community that strives to be welcoming and not holier-than-thou.
I'm also quite certain Apple et. al are no better.
I'm not sure. Maybe it's all hogwash, but Apple appears to take the working conditions of its suppliers' employees pretty seriously. You can read about it here: http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/ .
The government has no business whatsoever dictating what restaurants can and cannot have (never mind must have) on their menus. If you can't eat something, don't eat it... if that means not going out to eat, well that's your issue. Restaurant owners are not responsible for your health, you are.
Christ, what the hell happened to personal responsibility?
that really depends on the size of the snake: grease is a *huge* nightmare; this is why restaurants have grease traps. i've seen video tapes of (the insides of) sewers before they've been cleaned and the drains outside the average take-out chinese place are not pretty -- quantifiably worse than outside, say, a pizza shop. this doesn't imply anything other than more grease is generated as a by-product of the cuisine. as a landlord (at least where i live) you have to suck up and deal, either providing preventative maintenance (and the drano comes in handy here) or by not being a landlord at all.
mini rant: my two cents is that the "not be a landlord at all" option should be considered by more people who take it on. as a renter i'm not just paying your mortgage instead of mine because you provide a roof. maintenance and upkeep (and snow removal!) is a service that i'm paying for and expect. the landlords who think it's all "wait for the check to come in" don't get it and should get into some other line of work.
I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments you express in the first paragraph. For most people there's absolutely no need to be always available. In fact, it's making us as a society stupider and even less polite than before. My example: since everybody now has a cell phone I'm seeing that people are increasingly less able to make plans in advance.
Once upon a time we'd all make plans like "meet you friday, 5.30, murphy's pub" and that would be the end of it (until friday at 5.30 at murphy's pub). Now people make the plan then ask for my (non-existent) cell phone number "just in case something comes up." Like what? A better drinking partner? It's a bar, I can sit there for 15 minutes if you get held up in traffic; if you're appendix has burst I'll forgive you for standing me up; and if the car won't start, well, the bar has a phone number, go ahead and ring them up: nobody minds when the house phone rings.
(Speaking, more or less, about bar etiquette, what's with the assholes who go to the bar, order a drink, then sit there talking on the phone for 25 minutes while they drink it? Can't people be alone with their own thoughts for more than 30 seconds at a whack? How about talking to the barkeep or staring wistfully into your scotch?)
Ah - my apologies if I sounded snippy eariler. All too often the arts are made out to be something extraneous; I mistakenly detected some of that in your first post. k.
You're free to call me what you'd like; however, being vituperative doesn't make you correct. TextEdit will indeed let you save a newly created file as plaintext and no amount of arguing to the contrary will make it otherwise. It may not have been (to you) obvious how to do it but then maybe you shouldn't attempt to comment on an application or operating system you haven't actually used for more than a few minutes. Maybe?
Searching for "plaintext" in the TextEdit help viewer returns a number of pages. First is "Creating a document" this is the second paragraph:
TextEdit can create Rich Text Format (RTF) files and plain text documents. To change the type of all new documents, choose TextEdit > Preferences and click New Document. Select "Rich text" or "Plain text" under Format.
As for this fanboi nonsense, you do realize there's a wide gulf between "uninformed" and "fanboi" right? With most people (myself included) falling somewhere in the middle. The fact that many find the platform to be an optimal development workstation doesn't make us any more than satisfied customers. I really only replied because your claim was incredible and deserved calling out.
First, it's GNU Emacs (or XEmacs, or Aquamacs Emacs), not EMACS. That just makes you look like a 'tard.
Second, as others have pointed out, the cryptically named TextEdit edits plaintext no problem; I'll admit that hiding the rich text to plaintext conversion under the Format menu makes things difficult, but there you are.
Third, if you're so inclined (and you *are* a developer, right?) Apple estimates that it'd take you 15 minutes to roll your own and even provides instructions:
I'd like to know what's lacking developerwise. I develop Common Lisp (both SBCL and OpenMCL), Perl, Python, C, Obj-C, and Haskell on mine without issues. But then I do know Emacs...
Slashdot Mirror
"Remember when I suggested The Naked and Famous to you like three years ago? Oh, you don't? That's funny, this e-mail says otherwise."
Meh. The far more felicitous response is "Damn, I sure meant to." Conversations with friends -- and especially friends one is romantically involved with -- shouldn't sound like courtroom transcripts.
I keep talking to developers that code on OSX and I keep having the same question:
You're not going to be deploying any of that code on OSX, your target is almost always going to be Linux. So why not just develop on Linux?
It's a reasonable question.
For me it's really that I make money writing code; I haven't figured out how to get paid for configuring my laptop, so I'd prefer not to spend time on it. Also, work has no issues handing me an iMac but would get testy if I started running Linux on their network ... I realize that's silly but it's not a fight I'm interested in having. Once that stake is in the ground it makes sense to me to keep the environment homogeneous. Plus there's software I really do find useful: File Vault, Time Machine, iTunes, Omnigraffle, Skype, Live, Logic, iPhoto, and so on. I'm sure there are Linux alternatives but there's a cost associated with switching that I would find very expensive. So although the hardware might be more expensive than the alternatives (and again, even if it's $1k over the life of the machine is that a lot?), the operating costs are -- for me -- cheaper.
If I'd ever run into serious issues moving code between Linux and OS X I'd rethink it but I'm not sure I can remember a time when functional tests passed or failed in one environment but not the other. It all gets rerun in integration testing anyway, so even if something cropped up it'd be more of a curiosity than a production issue. I wouldn't run serious load, capacity, or performance testing on my desktop no matter what the OS, so that's a wash. I could imagine cases where this isn't so easy but apparently that's not the kind of development I do.
I'm not trying to sway anyone. It works well for me and has proven a profitable choice, that's all I really care.
Macs were a great unix desktop ten years ago, now they just kind of blow.
I'm curious ... what's changed? I get a lot of mileage out of OS X as a developer workstation and am honestly wondering what I'd gain by switching back to Linux.
I know there's a lot of talk about cost but that's irrelevant to me, $1k this way or that over the life of a computer just doesn't matter much. There seems to be discussion about the "walled garden" but at least for what I'm doing (Erlang, Scala, Ruby, Lisp, Postgres, MySQL, Emacs, &c.) I've never run into an issue. Nor has there ever been much of an issue deploying to Linux once the code's written.
So what blows?
In the same spirit as Cryptonomicon, I'd suggest:
- Thomas Pynchon: Against the Day, Gravity's Rainbow ... if you were forced to read The Crying of Lot 49 in school, give Pynchon another chance, he gets much better.
- Anything by David Foster Wallace. Although not all his work is not directly mathematical, his interest in math influences the way he writes. Infinite Jest is a fabulous read.
- Georges Perec: Life, A User's Manual. The Oulipo movement (of which Perec's a member) let algorithms directly influence the text (as well crop up in their stories). Perec is good, Calvino, Queneau, and Mathews are also Oulipo members readily available in English.
- Paul Verhaeghen: Omega Minor ... more science than math, still, a very engaging read.
(And although not mathematical at all, if you liked Crypto, you'd probably like Eco's Foucault's Pendulum.)
Along those lines: Racket: http://docs.racket-lang.org/ ... from download to putting pictures on the screen in 30 seconds.
It is if the twittererer (sorry, don't know this modern lingo - the guy who is twittering)
"Twat" is the term you're looking for.
And write 3x as much **production** quality code.
Oh, you mean the things that didn't work with C back in 1988 and didn't work with C++ in 1994 and didn't work with Perl in 1998 and didn't work with Java in 2003 and didn't work with C# in 2008 won't work with Ruby in 2011? Gosh, it's almost like all that prior experience is transferrable somehow, if only we could find some commonality.
I live in the south, and in general, when not in a the presence of black people, the term is still used freely as a synonym for a black person. And no...this is not a bunch of mouth breathing, uneducated rednecks. On the contrary, they are from all walks of life, and most that I am speaking off first knowledge of, are wealthy, well educated and often in places of power (yes, even governmental).
"They" may be well educated and wealthy, but "they" are also bigots. If it's not offensive, why only "when not in a the presence of black people"? What are you all afraid of?
The "it's only a word" non-argument only makes sense if the words don't have meaning. Once they're stand-ins for concepts they're no longer "just words." Didn't you learn anything about semiotics in school?
Consider a drum, xylophone, small guitar ... that sort of thing. Kids love shit that makes noise, exposing them to music is no bad thing, and it will drive your siblings crazy. Win, win, win. We bought my GF's nephew a drum for Xmas when he was a little kid; he's now in his second year at Berklee. It's probably not a direct correlation, but the exposure can't have hurt.
If we can set aside the fact that this is a cult leader who likes to play dress-up (hard, I agree), it might be that his statements have some merit. I mean, Twitter isn't actual communication, the people on Facebook aren't really friends, a half a dozen regularly read blogs do not comprise a realistic worldview, and so on. There's so much technical mediation of the real world nowadays that it's not like you have to look far to find someone who doesn't believe it's true unless his phone tells him about it. (Or, worse, who can't experience something without twittering it.)
Sometimes even insane people make valid points.
None of those languages have anything like the CPAN, despite saying for years "We should build something like the CPAN."
If this were the only true assertion you made (and it's not) it's reason enough to seriously consider Perl. I'd love to use Ruby more (it's a fun language, I like the OO, distributed and multithreaded programs are easy to write) but the libraries are lacking (as is easy library management).
Makes you figure there's a reason (La)TeX is still popular too, huh?
The issue must be an interesting one ... Ally McBeal ran the issue up the legal flagpole as well.
http://www.tv.com/ally-mcbeal/these-are-the-days/episode/1000/summary.html?tag=ep_guide;summary
I have worked in company where 90% of people used Emacs. And literally nobody could customize it. They had ~120K init.el from somebody else, it got copied all over the company, everybody used and nobody had a clue what was in it.
I also knew real pro Emacs user who knew pretty much all shortcuts and modes of the Emacs. But he also hardly ever tried to configure it: he tried it in past, failed and learned to live with the defaults instead.
With respect, I'm not sure either of these issues are the fault of the software.
For instance, the default Apache httpd.conf reads:
# Do NOT simply read the instructions in here without understanding
# what they do. They're here only as hints or reminders. If you are unsure
# consult the online docs. You have been warned.
I suspect that a similar warning may have been missing from the init.el that was being passed around.
Of course, emacs-lisp doesn't look much like C (or a language whose syntax derived from C), so there's certainly some getting over the parenthesis and function-first syntax. After that hurdle (and a bit of understanding what a symbol is and how to quote a list), it's just a matter of looking up unfamiliar functions (online, with C-h f), isn't it?
Or the mythical sages of Emacs configuration left their caves once and enlightened us all.
I yet to see a single Emacs user who has written the .init.el her/himself - not grabbed some decade old copy off the net.
It's probably just me, but these statements seem contradictory.
Seriously, emacs users are actually a really helpful bunch, check out the emacs wiki for instance. Or consider the amount of effort that's gone into making the customization system (M-x customize) easy for both end users to use and emacs-lisp developers to incorporate into their extensions. Or the quality (and price!) of the Emacs manual, Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp, or Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
Emacs users might be perceived as elitist or something, but the feeling I've always had is that it's a community that strives to be welcoming and not holier-than-thou.
If the Vatican had a PR department [...]
If?
I'm also quite certain Apple et. al are no better.
I'm not sure. Maybe it's all hogwash, but Apple appears to take the working conditions of its suppliers' employees pretty seriously. You can read about it here: http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/ .
No, nothing needs to be done.
The government has no business whatsoever dictating what restaurants can and cannot have (never mind must have) on their menus. If you can't eat something, don't eat it ... if that means not going out to eat, well that's your issue. Restaurant owners are not responsible for your health, you are.
Christ, what the hell happened to personal responsibility?
Sedate? IANAL, but that's just got to be asking for trouble, at least north of the M-D line.
s/(I've noticed that people needlessly talk).+/$1./
that really depends on the size of the snake: grease is a *huge* nightmare; this is why restaurants have grease traps. i've seen video tapes of (the insides of) sewers before they've been cleaned and the drains outside the average take-out chinese place are not pretty -- quantifiably worse than outside, say, a pizza shop. this doesn't imply anything other than more grease is generated as a by-product of the cuisine. as a landlord (at least where i live) you have to suck up and deal, either providing preventative maintenance (and the drano comes in handy here) or by not being a landlord at all.
mini rant: my two cents is that the "not be a landlord at all" option should be considered by more people who take it on. as a renter i'm not just paying your mortgage instead of mine because you provide a roof. maintenance and upkeep (and snow removal!) is a service that i'm paying for and expect. the landlords who think it's all "wait for the check to come in" don't get it and should get into some other line of work.
I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments you express in the first paragraph. For most people there's absolutely no need to be always available. In fact, it's making us as a society stupider and even less polite than before. My example: since everybody now has a cell phone I'm seeing that people are increasingly less able to make plans in advance.
Once upon a time we'd all make plans like "meet you friday, 5.30, murphy's pub" and that would be the end of it (until friday at 5.30 at murphy's pub). Now people make the plan then ask for my (non-existent) cell phone number "just in case something comes up." Like what? A better drinking partner? It's a bar, I can sit there for 15 minutes if you get held up in traffic; if you're appendix has burst I'll forgive you for standing me up; and if the car won't start, well, the bar has a phone number, go ahead and ring them up: nobody minds when the house phone rings.
(Speaking, more or less, about bar etiquette, what's with the assholes who go to the bar, order a drink, then sit there talking on the phone for 25 minutes while they drink it? Can't people be alone with their own thoughts for more than 30 seconds at a whack? How about talking to the barkeep or staring wistfully into your scotch?)
OK, rant's over.
Ah - my apologies if I sounded snippy eariler. All too often the arts are made out to be something extraneous; I mistakenly detected some of that in your first post. k.
You equate fine arts education with *lunch* (and imply that teaching it is wasting students' time)? How special.
First, it's GNU Emacs (or XEmacs, or Aquamacs Emacs), not EMACS. That just makes you look like a 'tard.
Second, as others have pointed out, the cryptically named TextEdit edits plaintext no problem; I'll admit that hiding the rich text to plaintext conversion under the Format menu makes things difficult, but there you are.
Third, if you're so inclined (and you *are* a developer, right?) Apple estimates that it'd take you 15 minutes to roll your own and even provides instructions:
Text System Overview: Building a Text Editor in 15 Minutes
I'd like to know what's lacking developerwise. I develop Common Lisp (both SBCL and OpenMCL), Perl, Python, C, Obj-C, and Haskell on mine without issues. But then I do know Emacs...