I am glad it worked for you but Ubuntu and most other Linux/Unix distros only worked for me as a server. Several years ago, when I first looked at Linux as Red Hat 7.0 I griped about bad looks, unintuitive GUI, not enough software, hard package management. Now all those issues are gone. But one problem remains. Hardware support. The Linux devs have done their work but now the ball is not in their court. Till the hardware vendors start coming up with driver support the same way they do for windows, Linux will not spread at the rate it deserves.
I have a PVR, a PDA, a Graphics card, a Camera and a Webcam sitting here. None of them work with any Linux I tried. Sound did not work in my latest Ubuntu install, but that not been the case before. I am not willing to hunt down issues for all of these each time I try a new distro hoping it would solve my problems. Ubuntu Desktop comes closer than any other Linux so far, but not quite there, at least for me. I know many of you had better luck than me and I hope more support comes along.
12. Do customers who acquire the Visual Studio Express products during the free promotional pricing period have to pay after the first year if they want to continue to use them?
If you acquire Visual Studio Express products within the one-year promotional period, you will enjoy the rights granted in the applicable license at no cost for the **term of that license**.
>> Most of this is working on CVS stuff (do a checkout when you have a net connection, edit away, then commit when you get back). I know it can be done on Windows, but it's damn ugly.
IPython is an interpreter. PyDev is an IDE (Editor). In IPython, your program is already in run state. Not so in an editor. So it's comparing apples to oranges.
IPython is not the first to do this either. PythonWin for example has had auto-complete for ages in it's internal interpreter.
>> So you take the responsiveness of an IDE as a measure for a language? That is nonsense.
No I don't. I am answering the specific refutal made by the parent.
>> You are claiming that Python as glue + C as language to do the heavy work is faster than Java, and in that sense: yes. So in fact you're not comparing Java to Python, but Java to C.
I am comparing speed of "applications" as whole as they occur in the wild rather pure benchmarks or language implementations because that's what matters.
>> I am a C++ and Java software engineer, working on very large projects for banking applications. We run Java (amongst others) on an MVS (IBM) mainframe, amongst others. As you might know, IBM mainframes are not bought, but paid per used CPU cycle! So we know damn well how efficient Java is.
I am well aware of efficiency of Java. I process several gigabytes of text data with Java and it performs quite comparably as with equivalent IR engines written in C++. But so does Python (with much of the code running in native extensions of course). If I have any peeves about Java, it is memory bloat and percieved startup times. They are often not an issue on servers, but are on the desktop. My point is not to say Java is slow but to say that idiomatic Python is effectively as fast or faster than idiomatic Java. Yes! Java can use native toolkits and become even faster but that's not what most people do. But that exactly is what most people do when they use dynamic languages.
No! Python (or Ruby or Perl) programs run FASTER than Java programs. That's despite pure Python being much slower than pure Java. Don't focus too much on benchmarks. They don't give a big picture. Python IDEs ARE MORE RESPONSIVE than Java IDEs. Take a look yourself.
That's because much of the cycles in a Python app are spent in optimized native code rather than in Python's byte code.
All Python GUI apps are faster because they are wrappers around fast C/C++ toolkits rather than pure byte code like Swing. If someone were to reimplement Swing in Python without using an external toolkit, it will no doubt be slow. But that is not the culture in Python. Same goes for most programming in Python. In fact, almost as a rule, anything where performance matters for Python apps, you have a C extension.
There is an advantage to Java's approach. Pack everything into a jar and it will run anywhere. With Python, I will have into seperately ensure that wxPython, numarray etc are installed for each platform since they are native extensions. However I never had a problem with that since they are available for both the platforms I use (windows and Linux) easily. If you use an exotic platform, you will have compile for it.
So while your code in Python will be portable, the dependencies are not always automatically. But I am happy with this trade off.
Why! Does everyone who does not agree with you must be out of their mind?
Eclipse is great as a code editor and better than Visual Studio. The total development experience however is much worse for developing everyday desktop applications. It abstracts the details very well and provides a more seamless experience.
There are lot more GUI building tools for Java (JBuilder, NetBeans, IntelliJ IDEA and a gazillion others) than Delphi (just one).
Java API very poorly targets everyday GUI developers. When I looked at Delphi several years ago, I was thrilled. everything was intuitive. Everything felt obvious. It hardly took any time to get used to.NET from Delphi. I have been using Swing for 5 years now, granted only occationally, and it still feels awkward. I have used a dozen different GUI toolkits in various languages. Delphi and.NET feel great as do the open source ones. Only Swing contuinues to frustrate me. NetBeans helps but to compare it in terms of ease, simplicy and intuitiveness of Delphi or.NET is far fetched.
Java Swing NEVER succeeded. Delphi had a fraction of developers compared to Java's. Yet, there are literally thousands of open source and commercial GUI widgets at torry.net alone. How many open source drag and drop, IDE friendly bean components are there for Swing?
Doctors don't really get any kickbacks from these posters. Usually the first rep that comes with the poster that makes sense to the doctor gets the space. If another rep comes with a better looking and more informative poster, it takes over. Poster choice rarely has anything to do with who makes them.
I am aware of PDF's intent (actually I think of it more as portability). I read a lot of scietific literature that comes as PDF. I frequently want to annote with my own notes but feel locked out. I could do this with the full version of Adobe Acrobat but there is no free tools that I am aware of that lets me do this.
The $800 scope (the major component of his $1000) is what he is pushing inside, not the webcam, which is the same thing you push inside with an expensive commercially made equipment. The 'scope' is basically a tiny lens on an optic fibre.
What he changed is all of the system that does not go into the human body.
mod_python is for apache only. This one is self contained. Your script itself becomes the web server. That presents a different picture. For example, it runs with your own permissions rather than Apache's (mod_python servlets are apache owned, not user owned since Python VM is now a part of Apache).
Very often for small web apps, all the code is in just one file - no seperate server, no server configuration. For me, CherryPy is simplicity. I use mod_python too, but for a different kind of apps.
Slashdot Mirror
I am glad it worked for you but Ubuntu and most other Linux/Unix distros only worked for me as a server. Several years ago, when I first looked at Linux as Red Hat 7.0 I griped about bad looks, unintuitive GUI, not enough software, hard package management. Now all those issues are gone. But one problem remains. Hardware support. The Linux devs have done their work but now the ball is not in their court. Till the hardware vendors start coming up with driver support the same way they do for windows, Linux will not spread at the rate it deserves.
I have a PVR, a PDA, a Graphics card, a Camera and a Webcam sitting here. None of them work with any Linux I tried. Sound did not work in my latest Ubuntu install, but that not been the case before. I am not willing to hunt down issues for all of these each time I try a new distro hoping it would solve my problems. Ubuntu Desktop comes closer than any other Linux so far, but not quite there, at least for me. I know many of you had better luck than me and I hope more support comes along.
I won't get the Pro edition till a month or two. But Express is no slower than VS2003 on my machine.
2.4 GHz P4
1 GB RAM
Win2K
You are right. I did not see this page earlier.
>> Oh well, .NET 2.0 is sure to kill me (or fry my chip due to the CPU requirements or their IDEs) so I guess it doesn't matter anyway.
.NET 2.0) will probably chug along on an older processor.
Why? Is your processor older than 5 years? VS2005 (at least the Express Edition) just needs 600 MHz - 1 GHz. Hardly obscene for a new RAD tool.
SharpDevelop (CVS edition supports
I am afraid, I read it no differently.
12. Do customers who acquire the Visual Studio Express products during the free promotional pricing period have to pay after the first year if they want to continue to use them?
If you acquire Visual Studio Express products within the one-year promotional period, you will enjoy the rights granted in the applicable license at no cost for the **term of that license**.
Among other things, they work for only 1 year. Not a big deal if you are just learning.
>> Most of this is working on CVS stuff (do a checkout when you have a net connection, edit away, then commit when you get back). I know it can be done on Windows, but it's damn ugly.
Not really.
http://www.tortoisecvs.org/
>> I don't have to think about memory allocation or anything even remotely machine-related.
Aside from C/C++, how many main stream languages don't have have garbage collection these days?
IPython is an interpreter. PyDev is an IDE (Editor). In IPython, your program is already in run state. Not so in an editor. So it's comparing apples to oranges.
IPython is not the first to do this either. PythonWin for example has had auto-complete for ages in it's internal interpreter.
>> So you take the responsiveness of an IDE as a measure for a language? That is nonsense.
No I don't. I am answering the specific refutal made by the parent.
>> You are claiming that Python as glue + C as language to do the heavy work is faster than Java, and in that sense: yes. So in fact you're not comparing Java to Python, but Java to C.
I am comparing speed of "applications" as whole as they occur in the wild rather pure benchmarks or language implementations because that's what matters.
>> I am a C++ and Java software engineer, working on very large projects for banking applications. We run Java (amongst others) on an MVS (IBM) mainframe, amongst others. As you might know, IBM mainframes are not bought, but paid per used CPU cycle! So we know damn well how efficient Java is.
I am well aware of efficiency of Java. I process several gigabytes of text data with Java and it performs quite comparably as with equivalent IR engines written in C++. But so does Python (with much of the code running in native extensions of course). If I have any peeves about Java, it is memory bloat and percieved startup times. They are often not an issue on servers, but are on the desktop. My point is not to say Java is slow but to say that idiomatic Python is effectively as fast or faster than idiomatic Java. Yes! Java can use native toolkits and become even faster but that's not what most people do. But that exactly is what most people do when they use dynamic languages.
All good. But don't get confused between static and strong typing. Python is dynamically and strongly typed, not weakly typed.
No! Python (or Ruby or Perl) programs run FASTER than Java programs. That's despite pure Python being much slower than pure Java. Don't focus too much on benchmarks. They don't give a big picture. Python IDEs ARE MORE RESPONSIVE than Java IDEs. Take a look yourself.
That's because much of the cycles in a Python app are spent in optimized native code rather than in Python's byte code.
All Python GUI apps are faster because they are wrappers around fast C/C++ toolkits rather than pure byte code like Swing. If someone were to reimplement Swing in Python without using an external toolkit, it will no doubt be slow. But that is not the culture in Python. Same goes for most programming in Python. In fact, almost as a rule, anything where performance matters for Python apps, you have a C extension.
There is an advantage to Java's approach. Pack everything into a jar and it will run anywhere. With Python, I will have into seperately ensure that wxPython, numarray etc are installed for each platform since they are native extensions. However I never had a problem with that since they are available for both the platforms I use (windows and Linux) easily. If you use an exotic platform, you will have compile for it.
So while your code in Python will be portable, the dependencies are not always automatically. But I am happy with this trade off.
Why! Does everyone who does not agree with you must be out of their mind?
Eclipse is great as a code editor and better than Visual Studio. The total development experience however is much worse for developing everyday desktop applications. It abstracts the details very well and provides a more seamless experience.
Java 2.0 is Java 1.2. That's Sun's terminology, not his.
There are lot more GUI building tools for Java (JBuilder, NetBeans, IntelliJ IDEA and a gazillion others) than Delphi (just one).
.NET from Delphi. I have been using Swing for 5 years now, granted only occationally, and it still feels awkward. I have used a dozen different GUI toolkits in various languages. Delphi and .NET feel great as do the open source ones. Only Swing contuinues to frustrate me. NetBeans helps but to compare it in terms of ease, simplicy and intuitiveness of Delphi or .NET is far fetched.
Java API very poorly targets everyday GUI developers. When I looked at Delphi several years ago, I was thrilled. everything was intuitive. Everything felt obvious. It hardly took any time to get used to
Java Swing NEVER succeeded. Delphi had a fraction of developers compared to Java's. Yet, there are literally thousands of open source and commercial GUI widgets at torry.net alone. How many open source drag and drop, IDE friendly bean components are there for Swing?
Well! They are in Wikipedia now
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM
"In 2005, Compu-Technics Inc. presented a 256 GiB/4GHz non-volatile Magnetic RAM array, as well as a notebook using this chip, SG220."
But Jabber doesn't do voice.
You can download VisiCalc from here.
http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm
It is 17K compressed (26K executable).
and does most of what I do with modern spreadsheets (I am a very light user of spreadsheets).
LOL
Doctors don't really get any kickbacks from these posters. Usually the first rep that comes with the poster that makes sense to the doctor gets the space. If another rep comes with a better looking and more informative poster, it takes over. Poster choice rarely has anything to do with who makes them.
I am aware of PDF's intent (actually I think of it more as portability). I read a lot of scietific literature that comes as PDF. I frequently want to annote with my own notes but feel locked out. I could do this with the full version of Adobe Acrobat but there is no free tools that I am aware of that lets me do this.
Doom 3 and UT2004 are NOT creative. Haven't played the rest. Like the article said, there is nothing to them but graphics and point and shoot.
Do you know any free PDF *EDITORS*?
This company called Google BTW, happens to know a thing or two about searching :-).
The $800 scope (the major component of his $1000) is what he is pushing inside, not the webcam, which is the same thing you push inside with an expensive commercially made equipment. The 'scope' is basically a tiny lens on an optic fibre.
What he changed is all of the system that does not go into the human body.
mod_python is for apache only. This one is self contained. Your script itself becomes the web server. That presents a different picture. For example, it runs with your own permissions rather than Apache's (mod_python servlets are apache owned, not user owned since Python VM is now a part of Apache).
Very often for small web apps, all the code is in just one file - no seperate server, no server configuration. For me, CherryPy is simplicity. I use mod_python too, but for a different kind of apps.