I totally agree with this but it goes even deeper. At the threshold of any major change in society the same things happen and its not just technology. There were major changes when man went from hunter/gatherer to the agricultural society. There were again major changes when man went from agriculture to industrial. It is happening again in our time as we change from industrial to information. There was opposition at each of these turning points....its only natural that people will fear what they don't understand. I'm not so sure that a distrust of innovation prevents anyone from using technology without thinking of the consequences. There are plenty of examples in this century alone where things were thought up and created where the consequences weren't thought out all that much. Its happening right now with biotechnology (cloning, etc).
Be happy that you learned this now and not later. Bills suck but making tons of money is irrelevant if you dont have any time outside of work to spend it. Most people come to find out that money does not equate to happiness so just count yourself as one of the lucky few who figured out pretty early in their career what you really want to be doing.
I'm still not sure why nobody has mentioned middle-of-the-road options like Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere (formerly SQL Anywhere) or Borland Interbase. No they are not free but they are both full-featured SQL databases that can handle a fairly large load (we have almost 10gb total in several databases running on SQLA right now). I personally don't know anything about the free db engines but SQL Anywhere is definitely a good choice for NT.
However, I must say that the reason Java hasn't displaced VB down to third(VB/Java address a different market than C, if you think about it) is that Sun royally and utterly bungled its deployment. VB projects "compile" down to an.EXE and a few random.DLL's that might have to be installed. C code compiles to executable files and some libraries that you probably already had anyway.
How is Sun supposed to compile to an exe and dlls when one of the whole points of java is binary compatibility between platforms? Also, there are options out there (Visual Cafe on Windows one example) that let you compile native executables.
Java development with the JDK is laughably awful, and will someday be a textbook example of how not to burden your coders and your users.
Then use a development environment. There are tons available including NetBeans.
From what I've seen--and I'm sure the experts can enlighten all of us further--merely getting javac to function(got everything in the right folder? Got your path environment set right? Sacrifice the correct barnyard animal?), then executing that Java app(better nuke the henhouse just to be sure) is far beyond the difficulty in even writing a simple Hello World!
I can't speak to JDK on other platforms besides Windows. On Windows 1.2 JDK none of these are issues. CLASSPATH is irrelevant. javac your application to compile it then java it to run it. It couldnt be any easier.
The fact that code never compiled into a single file didn't help either--web deployment was a mess, with forty web server connections for a single semi-useful app. JAR finally fixed this, but THAT standard got mangled by CABs.
JAR is the java standard. CAB is a Windows standard. Youd be hard-pressed to use CAB files with java on a Mac.
Alot of the problems wouldn't have been as significant if javac was as straightforward to play with on your average Linux distribution as, say, gcc. The non-free aspect of Java destroyed this possibility--and Sun's new "Gotcha Source" License isn't helping.
And exactly who is this affecting? Blackdown is working on 1.2 for Linux and IBM has a kick ass 1.1.8 VM for Linux.
Java came out of the gate hard to install, harder to deploy, slow to load, and slower to run.
Quite true.
Things have gotten better--J++ and the MS VM have been instrumental in this regard--but the core usability of Java is farrrrr less than VB, and even less than C.
No...J++ and the MS VM made things worse. The core usability of Java with a *proper tool* is just fine. How usable do you think VB would be without its GUI builder?
Very good points. I did an internship at Motorola once doing various programming duties in one of their factories. One of the systems we wrote had to 1:) work on *old* macs (Mac SEs) 2:) interface to the main defect database. What was the solution? A combination of a C program and shell scripts (awk and sed) on the unix/database side and a *Hypercard* application on the Mac side. We had Hypercard modules to interface with laser scanners and the mac had touch screens. This system worked wonderfully. This whole thing about 'real world' programs is stupid. *every* program is a 'real world' one because the developer (or developers) is using tools at hand to get a job done...in the real world. Man I get sick of the whole academic/theoretic look at things all the time.
Holy cow....time to read the Dream Park novels. They absolutely kick ass. The star trek holodeck on a theme park size scale. The ringworld books were good. Lucifers Hammer absolutely kicked ass. Please go to the library and get them...they are great books.
Funny....most of the comments I have read here so far sound like the people I talked to when I selected U of Illinois for school. You know...the well-rounded education, learning concepts instead of specifics, etc. The problem is that wasn't my education. The programming assignments/teaching were a complete joke. They'd make us slave over assignments for a week or so and when it was over you didnt learn squat. I learned specific languages...the concepts were not what was emphasized. As for the page posted about DeVry the guy who wrote it was obviously brainwashed into thinking what college should be vs what it really is. His examples of how horrible it was sounded like most of the stories I heard from friends who went to various colleges (as well as my own experiences). *All* colleges are money machines for the most part. They dont give a shit about 90% of the school population. If I had to do it all over again I would have done my degree in something like history because the time I wasted on CS in college didnt prepare me at all for the 'real' world...I was already prepared from learning on my own.
The web page referred to is so totally ridiculous I don't feel it is worth the time for anyone to read. I'll let you know several things about the voluntary simplicity movement:
1:) It has its fanatics like anything else (Amiga computers, Linux, Macs, etc, etc, etc). 2:) The gems you find in the voluntary simplicity movement never suggest giving up all technology or anything else so ludicrous. Voluntary simplicity is simply about making sure you have plenty of time to live and do it well whatever that might be. Freeing up time to do things you enjoy, freeing up money to do be able to do those same things (if money is necessary), etc, etc. Its about *choice* (like lots of others have been posting about). 3:) Most of the well-known voluntary simplicity writers simply provide a means to help you attain your goal. Dont like certain suggestions that Elaine St. James comes up with? Then ignore them. She won't care. Nobody is by any means suggesting give up everything and move to the woods and live in solitude (Thoreau didn't even do that. Even when he was living in the small cabin at Walden he returned to town when the fancy struck him. He wasn't stupid).
If you read the well-known and respected authors of voluntary simplicity works you will see that it is the best way for everyone to live because it means that everyone will be living the life they *choose* to live and simply aren't catering to the media...or for that matter trying to keep up with the Joneses.
No...you can thank the politicians for hemp not being accepted as a renewable resource. Think for a moment on just how many uses there are for hemp in addition to paper and you begin to see just how many industries would be in trouble if hemp were legal to grow in this country. Think lobbyists. The whole drug war thing is a farce.
You waited until now to say 'see ya'? Jeez...you'd think most amiga users would have said 'see ya' *years* ago. The only consistent thing about Amiga since CBM went under is that they've been yanking peoples chains. They've been doing a damn good job too. I fell for it for awhile then got my PC. Havent missed my Amiga since.
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I totally agree with this but it goes even deeper. At the threshold of any major change in society the same things happen and its not just technology. There were major changes when man went from hunter/gatherer to the agricultural society. There were again major changes when man went from agriculture to industrial. It is happening again in our time as we change from industrial to information. There was opposition at each of these turning points....its only natural that people will fear what they don't understand. I'm not so sure that a distrust of innovation prevents anyone from using technology without thinking of the consequences. There are plenty of examples in this century alone where things were thought up and created where the consequences weren't thought out all that much. Its happening right now with biotechnology (cloning, etc).
Are you high? Nobody is developing software for Windows??? Good delusion.
Be happy that you learned this now and not later. Bills suck but making tons of money is irrelevant if you dont have any time outside of work to spend it. Most people come to find out that money does not equate to happiness so just count yourself as one of the lucky few who figured out pretty early in their career what you really want to be doing.
I'm still not sure why nobody has mentioned middle-of-the-road options like Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere (formerly SQL Anywhere) or Borland Interbase. No they are not free but they are both full-featured SQL databases that can handle a fairly large load (we have almost 10gb total in several databases running on SQLA right now). I personally don't know anything about the free db engines but SQL Anywhere is definitely a good choice for NT.
How is Sun supposed to compile to an exe and dlls when one of the whole points of java is binary compatibility between platforms? Also, there are options out there (Visual Cafe on Windows one example) that let you compile native executables.
Java development with the JDK is laughably awful, and will someday be a textbook example of how not to burden your coders and your users.
Then use a development environment. There are tons available including NetBeans.
From what I've seen--and I'm sure the experts can enlighten all of us further--merely getting javac to function(got everything in the right folder? Got your path environment set right? Sacrifice the correct barnyard animal?), then executing that Java app(better nuke the henhouse just to be sure) is far beyond the difficulty in even writing a simple Hello World!
I can't speak to JDK on other platforms besides Windows. On Windows 1.2 JDK none of these are issues. CLASSPATH is irrelevant. javac your application to compile it then java it to run it. It couldnt be any easier.
The fact that code never compiled into a single file didn't help either--web deployment was a mess, with forty web server connections for a single semi-useful app. JAR finally fixed this, but THAT standard got mangled by CABs.
JAR is the java standard. CAB is a Windows standard. Youd be hard-pressed to use CAB files with java on a Mac.
Alot of the problems wouldn't have been as significant if javac was as straightforward to play with on your average Linux distribution as, say, gcc. The non-free aspect of Java destroyed this possibility--and Sun's new "Gotcha Source" License isn't helping.
And exactly who is this affecting? Blackdown is working on 1.2 for Linux and IBM has a kick ass 1.1.8 VM for Linux.
Java came out of the gate hard to install, harder to deploy, slow to load, and slower to run.
Quite true.
Things have gotten better--J++ and the MS VM have been instrumental in this regard--but the core usability of Java is farrrrr less than VB, and even less than C.
No...J++ and the MS VM made things worse. The core usability of Java with a *proper tool* is just fine. How usable do you think VB would be without its GUI builder?
Very good points. I did an internship at Motorola once doing various programming duties in one of their factories. One of the systems we wrote had to 1:) work on *old* macs (Mac SEs) 2:) interface to the main defect database. What was the solution? A combination of a C program and shell scripts (awk and sed) on the unix/database side and a *Hypercard* application on the Mac side. We had Hypercard modules to interface with laser scanners and the mac had touch screens. This system worked wonderfully. This whole thing about 'real world' programs is stupid. *every* program is a 'real world' one because the developer (or developers) is using tools at hand to get a job done...in the real world. Man I get sick of the whole academic/theoretic look at things all the time.
I dont get it....how is Niven the best hard SF author ever yet only produces better work in colaboration? Makes no sense.
Holy cow....time to read the Dream Park novels. They absolutely kick ass. The star trek holodeck on a theme park size scale. The ringworld books were good. Lucifers Hammer absolutely kicked ass. Please go to the library and get them...they are great books.
Dont know about Nvidia but 3dfx is working on Mac drivers for their video cards.
Funny....most of the comments I have read here so far sound like the people I talked to when I selected U of Illinois for school. You know...the well-rounded education, learning concepts instead of specifics, etc. The problem is that wasn't my education. The programming assignments/teaching were a complete joke. They'd make us slave over assignments for a week or so and when it was over you didnt learn squat. I learned specific languages...the concepts were not what was emphasized. As for the page posted about DeVry the guy who wrote it was obviously brainwashed into thinking what college should be vs what it really is. His examples of how horrible it was sounded like most of the stories I heard from friends who went to various colleges (as well as my own experiences). *All* colleges are money machines for the most part. They dont give a shit about 90% of the school population. If I had to do it all over again I would have done my degree in something like history because the time I wasted on CS in college didnt prepare me at all for the 'real' world...I was already prepared from learning on my own.
The web page referred to is so totally ridiculous I don't feel it is worth the time for anyone to read. I'll let you know several things about the voluntary simplicity movement:
1:) It has its fanatics like anything else (Amiga computers, Linux, Macs, etc, etc, etc).
2:) The gems you find in the voluntary simplicity movement never suggest giving up all technology or anything else so ludicrous. Voluntary simplicity is simply about making sure you have plenty of time to live and do it well whatever that might be. Freeing up time to do things you enjoy, freeing up money to do be able to do those same things (if money is necessary), etc, etc. Its about *choice* (like lots of others have been posting about).
3:) Most of the well-known voluntary simplicity writers simply provide a means to help you attain your goal. Dont like certain suggestions that Elaine St. James comes up with? Then ignore them. She won't care. Nobody is by any means suggesting give up everything and move to the woods and live in solitude (Thoreau didn't even do that. Even when he was living in the small cabin at Walden he returned to town when the fancy struck him. He wasn't stupid).
If you read the well-known and respected authors of voluntary simplicity works you will see that it is the best way for everyone to live because it means that everyone will be living the life they *choose* to live and simply aren't catering to the media...or for that matter trying to keep up with the Joneses.
No...you can thank the politicians for hemp not being accepted as a renewable resource. Think for a moment on just how many uses there are for hemp in addition to paper and you begin to see just how many industries would be in trouble if hemp were legal to grow in this country. Think lobbyists. The whole drug war thing is a farce.
You waited until now to say 'see ya'? Jeez...you'd think most amiga users would have said 'see ya' *years* ago. The only consistent thing about Amiga since CBM went under is that they've been yanking peoples chains. They've been doing a damn good job too. I fell for it for awhile then got my PC. Havent missed my Amiga since.
Hahahaha....what a great post! And scary that its so true...