I was introduced to the Foundation series by Foundation's Edge so I already knew where the Second Foundation was:(
Also, I read Forward the Foundation before Prelude, so Prelude was pretty much ruined for me. Nevertheless, The Foundation series is one of the few sci-fi novels that I have reread several times
I've met very few people who would take Sonic over Mario. I'm totally with you man. I seriously do not understand how people can like Mario after playing Sonic. Mario was so goddamn BORING! Sonic had awesome levels, great music, and was far more playable.
Although these days, I get my sonic fix from emulators. Btw, are you from England? the Megadrive was called the Genesis in the US. I used to live in Leeds when the Megadrive was around and always wanted one. I'll probably be getting a 360 next year though:/ I really want to see what happens in Halo 3.
Microsoft Research dominates other areas of computer science as well. For instance, check out how many papers from MSR was accepted at SIGGRAPH 2005. Or check out their NLP and AI research. MSR hires some of the brightest minds in computer science research and provides them with a *lot* of money and a completely free rein to do whatever they want. Furthermore, a lot of the research is then published in open conferences. Don't underestimate MSR. Although a lot of MSR projects don't directly translate into shipping projects, many ideas from MSR do filter down to products as time passes.
I'm not sure how feasible it is to profile such a large program, but I'm sure Microsoft profiles the daylights out of their stuff. Do OOo developers profile things like the start-up time? After all, you can't start optimizing things unless you figure out exactly what is slowing it down. Is it the Java run-time engine? Is it because it needs to load a lot of libraries that MS Office does not need to (because of dynamic linking to Microsoft DLLs). Maybe when loading certain data sets, the program goes into a pathalogical state, creating hundreds of thousands of small objects? I don't know.
But things like analyzing profiling data and then optimizing are not fun to most people. Even more so if it means that an algorithm needs to be re-written. After all, if the "open file" operation needs a complete re-think + re-write, who's going to do it? It's not "fun". After all, the "open file" operation already exists. Generally, I think programmers like to build *new* things as opposed to fixing old things. And in this case, it's not even a matter of "fixing". It's a matter of rewriting. I presume that at Microsoft, if Word's "open file" operation (run with me on this for a minute) is uber-slow, then somebody is going to *have* to fix it, or not get a good performance review/etc. However, in the case of OOo if no one makes it faster, well, it does not negatively affect the person who wrote the slow version in the first place (not to discredit OOo authors or anything. They've done a phenomenal job given that they do this for fun and not profit).
Of course, there are an equal number of programmers who like to fix security holes and so forth, but patching a security hole is one thing, while re-writing major algorithms in a large program is another. There are of course some programmers who love optimizing code (Michael Abrash?). But I think they are far and few between. Very often, once something works, an attitude sets in that "It's working. Now don't break it". And optimization in it's early stages will often break things.
1) it's generally easier to debug Java than to debug C/C++ and 2) A lot of F/OSS advocates are in love with Java because of the magic phrase, "Platform independence".
Doesn't matter about the language's shortcomings. Personally, I think Java has it's place, but that place is not writing large, client rich applications such as an office suite. These days, I see a lot of people jumping to statements like "Java is *not* interpreted" and "Java is as fast, if not faster, than C++". I presume the reasoning behind such statements is the JIT compiler. However, a JIT compiler is still no match for a traditional optimizing compiler. Furthermore, even with a JIT compiler, the sheer number of run-time checks going on in Java would make it slow(er). Agreed, the run-time checks make for a more secure program, but I think that a sophisticated, experienced C/C++ programmer can also write a secure, modular, robust program. The Linux kernel is probably the best proof of that.
However, I've noticed a lot of people on this thread are stating that OpenOffice.org is not written in Java; That it's mainly C++. So I suppose the XML parsing is done in Java? C++ seriously needs better text processing libraries. Boost needs to become a part of the standard library. Then lazy people will not turn to Java/C#/Python when writing something like an XML parser.
Actually, if you use Visual Studio for writing C#, it provides similar features (points out compiler errors/warnings while you type, generates stubs for interfaces etc etc). So the issue is not with Visual Studio, it's with the language. So I don't think it's fair to say that Eclipse makes Visual Studio look like Notepad. How is Eclipse with a C++ compiler on the backend? I've never used it so I don't know.
Hmmm. This is weird. I use Visual Studio every day for both C++ (unmanaged) and C#. And even in C#, it does not complete identifier names for me. If I type a period, then it will bring up a list of properties/method/fields, but only then. And I don't recall making any changes to the default intellisense configuration (I don't even know if it lets you do that).
Let me know how you get graded on your operating systems class. The one where you need to write the kernal of an OS or write a threading package and a remote procedure call library.
Haha. Nice. Christianity is not what Jesus taught. When I was a kid growing up in England, I attended a Catholic school for about 3 years (it was close by, hence convenient). Man, for about 3 hours a day, they taught stuff from the bible. Then lunch was 1 hour. And then 2 more hours you would actually learn something. First couple of years was actually not bad; I had teachers who were interested in teaching science/math/etc. Third year, was insane. Both my parents were educated in India (you might have heard about the crazy education systems they have in Asia). They could not believe that I did not know the "five times table" by the time I was 9.
However, I *did* know all of Jesus's teachings etc etc. The way they presented it was really nice too. Almost made you think that you were going to hell for not being Christian. Thank god (with a small "g") my parents pulled me out during that third year.
Hmmm, are many private schools in the US like this? I'm still in graduate school, and have a LONG time to go before I even have to worry about this kind of stuff, but if I can afford it, I would want to send my kids to a private school, but if they are just going to be brainwashed etc, then screw it. But then, (not to troll or anything) from what I've gathered, public schools in the US are not the best, except for specialized schools like the Governer's school system in Virginia.
I'm confused. Can you elaborate? If you are saying that girls from all-girls schools turn into sex-crazy sluts (with exceptions of course), then yes, I can totally see that. It's really messed up. In India, there are a lot of all-girl or all-boy schools. Once these kids hit college, they respond in one of two ways: 1) Are completely unable to deal with or interact with the opposite sex or 2) Girls become uber-sluts, and boys become total sleazeballs. It's nice to see that their parents succeeded in their quest to raise such sweet, innoccent children. Idiots.
Whoever made that Chinese comment: Yeah figures. Go around policing the world, but don't look in your own backyard. Like so many people have pointed out, a private institution can do whatever it wants, but they better not be getting federal money. Unfortunately, that is often not the case (ie they do get federal money). This kind of crap makes me so mad. BYU is a school full of maniacs. Can't drink coffee? What the fuck? And if I want to drink alchohol, that's my fucking business. BYU is nothing more than a fucking "conversion camp". I know of international students who have received scholarships etc from BYU. And then basically, undergone 4 years of brainwashing and proselytizing. Luckily, these days, international students are more aware of places like BYU and stay away. Unfortunately, some people still get roped in, and then either have to convert in order to deal with the place, or end up going back home, completely traumatized.
Organized religion. Makes me puke.
I agree that FrontPage is pretty bad, but I think the article was referring to Microsoft's desktop application programming tools, hence they said "make it easier for developers to write software that run on Windows."
Although a lot of people deny it, Visual Studio.NET is really an excellent piece of work. The C++ compiler is more standards complient than the KAI compiler (which is often touted as the most standards complient C++ compiler around). Personally, I used to detest both C# and Java but recently I've been doing some work in C# and it's quite effective and productive if you are sticking to a Windows environment. On the other hand, I work in graphics where speed is important, so I treat C# as more of a prototyping tool, and then convert to C++ ("classical", NOT "managed"). Visual Basic is good for really rapid prototyping I suppose. I used VB 3.0 in 1993 and quickly outgrew it, although people say that Visual Basic really came into it's own after version 5.0. Personally, I'm never going back to any variant of Basic.
On the other hand, I am not a big fan of ASP.NET. I don't know anything about web applications development, but I presume that if you are coding stuff in ASP, then you need to be hosting the website using IIS. Although I really don't know; does Apache etc support ASP.NET in some form of emulation or something?
Omg. So far Google has resisted censoring imagery? Have you tried to look at the White House or the Capitol building in Google maps? So as long as the American buildings are blurred out, the rest of the world can go to hell, is that it?
As someone pointed out earlier, it's not the location of the buildings that matters. You can ask any cab driver in any capital building to take you to the home of the President/Prime Minister or to the legislature/Supreme Court/etc. The point is that would be terrorists generally don't have good idea of the internal layout of the compound of these buildings. The attack on the Indian Parliament by Pakistani terrorists was foiled because the attackers were not aware of the layout of the compound within the walls.
As someone else pointed out, Google does blur out the White House and the Capitol and nearby buildings. However, I think it's equally important for the company to allow other countries to request that Google blur out their sensitive buildings as well. Of course if they blur out the sensitive American buildings, then that's enough. Who gives a shit about the rest of world.
Uh huh. I bet you would have said the same thing about aircraft in 1900. And desktop computers in the 1950s. And about putting a man on the moon. Maybe you should become Amish or something.
Omg. Seriously are you a Jobs idolizer? Just because Microsoft has Macs on its campus, you conclude that Gates and senior management prefer Macs? Did you forget that the Office team developes for Macs as well? How do you think they develop? Do you think they run some sort of OS X simulator on a Windows box? What about IE for OS X?
Someone mod OP down please.
Jeeze. "Widely known". What bullshit. This is crap. Gates and Co. do not use Macs. You're pulling this out of your ass. Damn Steve Jobs cult worshipper.
The liberal arts joke is always funny. I went to a liberal arts college and did computer science and math (not really that much of an oxymoron). It was frustrating for my friends who wanted to get a job, but I wanted to go on to grad school, and that worked out very well, since the program was very focused on theory and problem solving, as opposed to learning an array of "hot" languages. I'll be graduating with my masters in a year, and have a pretty solid job lined up. So although I'm entering the work force a couple years later than my friends in college, I have had the opportunity to do some more research/academic work (without having to go for a full blown PhD). Furthermore, all that liberal arts propaganda about "education for a life" etc etc is somewhat true; I can pretend to know about a variety of different topics and hold at least cursory conversations in areas that normally would be totally boring to me.
On the other hand, if I had looked for and gotten a good job after college, I would have probably taken it. Given that it was almost impossible to get a decent job after doing CS in central Ohio, I had an opportunity cost of two years of income as well as two years of industrial experience. Oh well. Interestingly, all the accounting majors got fairly decent (for their standards) jobs in major Manhattan banks. Damn bean counters.
I've heard that Python is a lot of fun to code in. Is that really true? I mean Java and C# have similar features to Python right? In terms of high level libraries, code succinty, etc etc. I've been meaning to learn Python because I've heard so many good things about it. Do you have any specifics you'd like to share?
*sigh*. Programming and software engineering is increasingly being outsourced to India. Tech support is of course outsoruced, but India is the second largest software developing country on the planet these days.
Slashdot Mirror
I was introduced to the Foundation series by Foundation's Edge so I already knew where the Second Foundation was :(
Also, I read Forward the Foundation before Prelude, so Prelude was pretty much ruined for me. Nevertheless, The Foundation series is one of the few sci-fi novels that I have reread several times
I've met very few people who would take Sonic over Mario. I'm totally with you man. I seriously do not understand how people can like Mario after playing Sonic. Mario was so goddamn BORING! Sonic had awesome levels, great music, and was far more playable.
:/ I really want to see what happens in Halo 3.
Although these days, I get my sonic fix from emulators. Btw, are you from England? the Megadrive was called the Genesis in the US. I used to live in Leeds when the Megadrive was around and always wanted one. I'll probably be getting a 360 next year though
Microsoft Research dominates other areas of computer science as well. For instance, check out how many papers from MSR was accepted at SIGGRAPH 2005. Or check out their NLP and AI research. MSR hires some of the brightest minds in computer science research and provides them with a *lot* of money and a completely free rein to do whatever they want. Furthermore, a lot of the research is then published in open conferences. Don't underestimate MSR. Although a lot of MSR projects don't directly translate into shipping projects, many ideas from MSR do filter down to products as time passes.
I'm not sure how feasible it is to profile such a large program, but I'm sure Microsoft profiles the daylights out of their stuff. Do OOo developers profile things like the start-up time? After all, you can't start optimizing things unless you figure out exactly what is slowing it down. Is it the Java run-time engine? Is it because it needs to load a lot of libraries that MS Office does not need to (because of dynamic linking to Microsoft DLLs). Maybe when loading certain data sets, the program goes into a pathalogical state, creating hundreds of thousands of small objects? I don't know.
But things like analyzing profiling data and then optimizing are not fun to most people. Even more so if it means that an algorithm needs to be re-written. After all, if the "open file" operation needs a complete re-think + re-write, who's going to do it? It's not "fun". After all, the "open file" operation already exists. Generally, I think programmers like to build *new* things as opposed to fixing old things. And in this case, it's not even a matter of "fixing". It's a matter of rewriting. I presume that at Microsoft, if Word's "open file" operation (run with me on this for a minute) is uber-slow, then somebody is going to *have* to fix it, or not get a good performance review/etc. However, in the case of OOo if no one makes it faster, well, it does not negatively affect the person who wrote the slow version in the first place (not to discredit OOo authors or anything. They've done a phenomenal job given that they do this for fun and not profit).
Of course, there are an equal number of programmers who like to fix security holes and so forth, but patching a security hole is one thing, while re-writing major algorithms in a large program is another. There are of course some programmers who love optimizing code (Michael Abrash?). But I think they are far and few between. Very often, once something works, an attitude sets in that "It's working. Now don't break it". And optimization in it's early stages will often break things.
Well, they are probably using Java because
1) it's generally easier to debug Java than to debug C/C++ and
2) A lot of F/OSS advocates are in love with Java because of the magic phrase, "Platform independence".
Doesn't matter about the language's shortcomings. Personally, I think Java has it's place, but that place is not writing large, client rich applications such as an office suite. These days, I see a lot of people jumping to statements like "Java is *not* interpreted" and "Java is as fast, if not faster, than C++". I presume the reasoning behind such statements is the JIT compiler. However, a JIT compiler is still no match for a traditional optimizing compiler. Furthermore, even with a JIT compiler, the sheer number of run-time checks going on in Java would make it slow(er). Agreed, the run-time checks make for a more secure program, but I think that a sophisticated, experienced C/C++ programmer can also write a secure, modular, robust program. The Linux kernel is probably the best proof of that.
However, I've noticed a lot of people on this thread are stating that OpenOffice.org is not written in Java; That it's mainly C++. So I suppose the XML parsing is done in Java? C++ seriously needs better text processing libraries. Boost needs to become a part of the standard library. Then lazy people will not turn to Java/C#/Python when writing something like an XML parser.
Ok, but then why can't the OOo developers create their own fast XML parsing code?
Actually, if you use Visual Studio for writing C#, it provides similar features (points out compiler errors/warnings while you type, generates stubs for interfaces etc etc). So the issue is not with Visual Studio, it's with the language. So I don't think it's fair to say that Eclipse makes Visual Studio look like Notepad. How is Eclipse with a C++ compiler on the backend? I've never used it so I don't know.
Hmmm. This is weird. I use Visual Studio every day for both C++ (unmanaged) and C#. And even in C#, it does not complete identifier names for me. If I type a period, then it will bring up a list of properties/method/fields, but only then. And I don't recall making any changes to the default intellisense configuration (I don't even know if it lets you do that).
Let me know how you get graded on your operating systems class. The one where you need to write the kernal of an OS or write a threading package and a remote procedure call library.
Haha. Sweet dude.
Haha. Nice. Christianity is not what Jesus taught. When I was a kid growing up in England, I attended a Catholic school for about 3 years (it was close by, hence convenient). Man, for about 3 hours a day, they taught stuff from the bible. Then lunch was 1 hour. And then 2 more hours you would actually learn something. First couple of years was actually not bad; I had teachers who were interested in teaching science/math/etc. Third year, was insane. Both my parents were educated in India (you might have heard about the crazy education systems they have in Asia). They could not believe that I did not know the "five times table" by the time I was 9. However, I *did* know all of Jesus's teachings etc etc. The way they presented it was really nice too. Almost made you think that you were going to hell for not being Christian. Thank god (with a small "g") my parents pulled me out during that third year.
Yeah. People at Google get paid a lot but dont drive nice cars to work. After all, you dont want to appear like you're upstaging the boss. Haha.
Hmmm, are many private schools in the US like this? I'm still in graduate school, and have a LONG time to go before I even have to worry about this kind of stuff, but if I can afford it, I would want to send my kids to a private school, but if they are just going to be brainwashed etc, then screw it. But then, (not to troll or anything) from what I've gathered, public schools in the US are not the best, except for specialized schools like the Governer's school system in Virginia.
I'm confused. Can you elaborate? If you are saying that girls from all-girls schools turn into sex-crazy sluts (with exceptions of course), then yes, I can totally see that. It's really messed up. In India, there are a lot of all-girl or all-boy schools. Once these kids hit college, they respond in one of two ways: 1) Are completely unable to deal with or interact with the opposite sex or 2) Girls become uber-sluts, and boys become total sleazeballs. It's nice to see that their parents succeeded in their quest to raise such sweet, innoccent children. Idiots.
Whoever made that Chinese comment: Yeah figures. Go around policing the world, but don't look in your own backyard. Like so many people have pointed out, a private institution can do whatever it wants, but they better not be getting federal money. Unfortunately, that is often not the case (ie they do get federal money). This kind of crap makes me so mad. BYU is a school full of maniacs. Can't drink coffee? What the fuck? And if I want to drink alchohol, that's my fucking business. BYU is nothing more than a fucking "conversion camp". I know of international students who have received scholarships etc from BYU. And then basically, undergone 4 years of brainwashing and proselytizing. Luckily, these days, international students are more aware of places like BYU and stay away. Unfortunately, some people still get roped in, and then either have to convert in order to deal with the place, or end up going back home, completely traumatized. Organized religion. Makes me puke.
I agree that FrontPage is pretty bad, but I think the article was referring to Microsoft's desktop application programming tools, hence they said "make it easier for developers to write software that run on Windows." Although a lot of people deny it, Visual Studio .NET is really an excellent piece of work. The C++ compiler is more standards complient than the KAI compiler (which is often touted as the most standards complient C++ compiler around). Personally, I used to detest both C# and Java but recently I've been doing some work in C# and it's quite effective and productive if you are sticking to a Windows environment. On the other hand, I work in graphics where speed is important, so I treat C# as more of a prototyping tool, and then convert to C++ ("classical", NOT "managed"). Visual Basic is good for really rapid prototyping I suppose. I used VB 3.0 in 1993 and quickly outgrew it, although people say that Visual Basic really came into it's own after version 5.0. Personally, I'm never going back to any variant of Basic.
On the other hand, I am not a big fan of ASP.NET. I don't know anything about web applications development, but I presume that if you are coding stuff in ASP, then you need to be hosting the website using IIS. Although I really don't know; does Apache etc support ASP.NET in some form of emulation or something?
Omg. So far Google has resisted censoring imagery? Have you tried to look at the White House or the Capitol building in Google maps? So as long as the American buildings are blurred out, the rest of the world can go to hell, is that it? As someone pointed out earlier, it's not the location of the buildings that matters. You can ask any cab driver in any capital building to take you to the home of the President/Prime Minister or to the legislature/Supreme Court/etc. The point is that would be terrorists generally don't have good idea of the internal layout of the compound of these buildings. The attack on the Indian Parliament by Pakistani terrorists was foiled because the attackers were not aware of the layout of the compound within the walls.
As someone else pointed out, Google does blur out the White House and the Capitol and nearby buildings. However, I think it's equally important for the company to allow other countries to request that Google blur out their sensitive buildings as well. Of course if they blur out the sensitive American buildings, then that's enough. Who gives a shit about the rest of world.
Dude, what a bitch. I knew she was controversial, but replacing the founder's portraits with her own? Goddamn, I hate liberal arts people.
Uh huh. I bet you would have said the same thing about aircraft in 1900. And desktop computers in the 1950s. And about putting a man on the moon. Maybe you should become Amish or something.
Omg. Seriously are you a Jobs idolizer? Just because Microsoft has Macs on its campus, you conclude that Gates and senior management prefer Macs? Did you forget that the Office team developes for Macs as well? How do you think they develop? Do you think they run some sort of OS X simulator on a Windows box? What about IE for OS X? Someone mod OP down please.
Jeeze. "Widely known". What bullshit. This is crap. Gates and Co. do not use Macs. You're pulling this out of your ass. Damn Steve Jobs cult worshipper.
The liberal arts joke is always funny. I went to a liberal arts college and did computer science and math (not really that much of an oxymoron). It was frustrating for my friends who wanted to get a job, but I wanted to go on to grad school, and that worked out very well, since the program was very focused on theory and problem solving, as opposed to learning an array of "hot" languages. I'll be graduating with my masters in a year, and have a pretty solid job lined up. So although I'm entering the work force a couple years later than my friends in college, I have had the opportunity to do some more research/academic work (without having to go for a full blown PhD). Furthermore, all that liberal arts propaganda about "education for a life" etc etc is somewhat true; I can pretend to know about a variety of different topics and hold at least cursory conversations in areas that normally would be totally boring to me. On the other hand, if I had looked for and gotten a good job after college, I would have probably taken it. Given that it was almost impossible to get a decent job after doing CS in central Ohio, I had an opportunity cost of two years of income as well as two years of industrial experience. Oh well. Interestingly, all the accounting majors got fairly decent (for their standards) jobs in major Manhattan banks. Damn bean counters.
I've heard that Python is a lot of fun to code in. Is that really true? I mean Java and C# have similar features to Python right? In terms of high level libraries, code succinty, etc etc. I've been meaning to learn Python because I've heard so many good things about it. Do you have any specifics you'd like to share?
*sigh*. Programming and software engineering is increasingly being outsourced to India. Tech support is of course outsoruced, but India is the second largest software developing country on the planet these days.