Could you explain concretely what you like about working with C?
I used to claim the same thing, but after years not being required to use C, in hindsight, I can chalk up every reason I enjoyed it to senseless machismo, and my most concrete memories are of all the time of mine C wasted by not warning of or preventing egregious errors from simple typographical mistakes.
I would never choose C if starting a new project, and it still baffles me that some do. But to each his own I guess:) Just glad I don't need to read their code!
I do believe that anyone that claims to actually like working with C or C++ is either
1) Unfamiliar with any languages that don't let you shoot yourself in the face so easily.
2) More like a machine than a man.
3) Trying to show off his "hacking skillz".
4) Being overly nostalgic.
5) Hasn't actually used C or C++ in about a decade.
IMHO using C or C++ when not necessary displays a depressing amount of machismo and masochism. Why do it to yourself?
You can write managed code against the XNA framework to target both WP7 and the XBox. For the iPhone, I believe there is an option to compile the managed code to iPhone native code, but I haven't looked into it too far as of yet, believe the project is called Unity?
Powershell embraces a lot of functional programming paradigms rather than relegating everything to pipeline based text processing. There is a reason why its codename was "Monad". It was designed around passing objects and tables around using a common type system, to create more flexible interaction between all the different cmdlets. Anyone that has used Linq will also notice a lot of similarities on that front. Again, as I forewarned, I certainly haven't used every shell out there, so I really don't know how many of these are unique to Powershell. But I don't think it should be relegated to the knee-jerk "me too" labels people seem to want to apply to it, as it seems a good deal of thought and iteration went into its design.
Not letting the developer's use C++ actually makes me feel better about purchasing one of these. I trust a managed code sandbox more than a native code sandbox. I'd rather not have to install an anti-virus program just to feel comfortable installing apps on my phone.
The problem is that only someone handy with computers could get to that level of competence with a Windows Mobile phone. To everyone else it was an impenetrable muck, and remains so. Things have been made a little better over time by companies building interfaces on top of WM, but has never made it a friendly consumer oriented OS. I waited for a long time for a way to simply push Gmail to the darn thing and eventually had to build my own IMAP IDLE client. I bought a Windows Mobile phone because it seemed nice to develop for, but wasn't expecting to NEED to develop for it to get all the functionality I wanted.
Thankfully WP7 looks friendly to use, AND nice to develop for. Sounds good to me.
No, it's more like Windows 7 is what Windows Vista would have been if they had waited until it was done before taking it out of the oven. Blame whoever it was that decided to release Vista in the state it was in. If you do a feature to feature comparison of Vista and 7 there are not really a lot of new features, but I conclude from the generally better responsiveness I've experiences and some of the details that I've heard that a lot of work went on smoothing out the internals. Add that to the best taskbar that windows has ever had (which is much better than OSX's dock IMHO) and you have a really solid improvement over Vista. Anyone that claims 7 is Vista with a new paintjob is likely comparing only top-level features and visual style.
I second these. Powershell in particular is very excellent. Anyone who thinks its a "catch up" product should probably read into it a bit more. I can't claim to have used every shell thats out there, but it certainly seems like many of its features are innovations to me.
I would put another MS product on the top of that list though: Windows Home Server (best MS product yet). And how about some Windows Media Center love? Just because the the cable companies are trying their hardest to make CableCARD suck doesn't mean WMC isn't a fantastic product.
I agree with you about earlier versions of windows mobile being a previous Sprint PPC6700 and AT&T tilt user. They appealed to me because they were supremely easy to develop for and were much more like having a computer in your pocket than anything else at the time. Earlier versions of windows mobile were very very crap though, and I can't agree more with you on this count.
But using your experiences with WM6/6.5 and earlier to make any kind of assumption about Windows Phone 7 is like assuming you wont like the XBOX 360 because you don't like Windows ME. Other than the OS kernel I don't there is many similarities in the codebase between WP7 and earlier versions, its been designed from the ground up to be a different animal, and probably bears more resemblence to the Zune or XBox codebase than to the Windows Mobile codebase.
I like everything I hear about this new platform, but I'm not exceedingly impartial, as I'm a big fan of Silverlight and other aspects of WP7s development environment. I think its only problem, currently, is the head start the other platforms have had, and the bad taste left in everyones mouths by Kin and WM6.5 and earlier. But, personally, I think they've done enough to distance WP7 from those platforms. Lets see how it goes!
Problem is that it is hard to lock down what information an app can send out if it makes http requests. The request is itself a transmission of information from the client. You would have to use a much more constrained resource requesting protocol to actually prevent an application from sending sensitive data.
Not to start any arguments, but informed blu-ray consumers would have bought a Playstation 3. It was the highest rated device (maybe still is) for quite some time in terms of all number of metrics, and had built in future proofing due to Sony's need to add value to the system over time to compete with the XBox 360. Not other hardware manufacturer has that impetus to keep their various blu-ray players value competitive with anything, you've already bought the device. Consequently, blu-ray consumers that have bought the PS3, will be rewarded with 3D support.
It seems like a game console is one of the safest buys you can make in electronics (apart from launch hardware defects), as the long lifecycles force the companies to add value over time. If you discount the removal of the Other OS feature (which has of course caused much ire in this hotbed of OSS villainy) and just look at the number of features included at launch for these consoles, vs today, as well as the breadth of the feature sets, it becomes hard to justify buying a set top box with dedicated function (a stand-alone blu-ray player).
This may change in the future if the game consoles interfaces start to become as cluttered as windows, and we may see a resurgence of appliance style boxes to connect to TVs much like computer industry is seeing a shift to appliance style computers (iPhone, iPad), but as it stands currently, the PS3 OS is as simple to operate as the iPhone, and a good deal simpler than your standard STB, which can often require consulting the manual to determine the workflow for some features. The XBOX 360 interface however, is another matter.
Problem is, do you know what also seems to make website performance crappy? Poorly written Javascript, which is just as prevalent as Flash, IMO. The web needs languages that encourage more maintainable and efficient applications. Flash and Javascript are not the right answers here. I think Silverlight is more of a step in the right direction in terms of maintainable and fast internet apps. That or using Javascript as a bytecode rather than a development language.
I think there is something to be said in a single sandboxed platform like Flash/Silverlight being available on all hardware types to bring a guaranteed level of consistency/performance across the board. If someone designs an app in flash/silverlight/etc. they know with high certainty that it will perform and look the same way on all platforms supported by the plugin. If history is to be trusted for extrapolative purposes, the various HTML5 implementations will not offer that kind of consistency. Although, since many of the browsers use the same engines nowadays this problem is somewhat mitigated. Still, I like Adoble/Microsoft having great incentive to make sure that Flash/Silverlight content displays the same on all platforms. The browsers don't really have the same incentives. Their perfect, desired situation is to have their rendering of HTML5 vary slightly from the other contenders, and hold enough marketshare that web content is designed around their quirks, and not their competitors quirks. Its a bit of a conflict of interest, IMO.
Actually, I think the formation of iRobot may predate Apple's use of the prefix, but I'm not sure about that. And, if I had to guess, its probably a reference to the Asimov book of short stories.
Re:Mumbo Jumbo
on
Lost Ends
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The writing in the earlier seasons seemed to have much more intellectual integrity. Not sure what changed. Did someone leave the show or something? Some auditor or other writer?
Re:Was Not Impressed at All
on
Lost Ends
·
· Score: 1
I think the Lost finally was pretty obnoxious and failed to explain any of the interesting mysteries of the show. Their stance seems to be that we shouldn't try to understand the mysterious, and, rather, just let it wash over us. I just say, "No".
The problem, of course, being that their retaliation will be to cap our bandwidth. They wont sit still. So unless competition forces them to keep the bandwidth uncapped, you wont have enough bits to satisfy your video fix.
you forgot to mention that it can take any sized hdds, you don't have to match them in size or brand, and if the whole hardware fails the files are just stored in a regular ntfs partition. So you can just mount it on a normal windows/linux/etc box to grab files off the drives. Very cool. That and its easy to migrate drives between different hardware since its a software based solution.
I would call hardware like the iPad a computer appliance. When people buy tools for their tool shed or household items, they know that if they buy something that tries to do everything, usually it will suck at most things it does. So they buy targeted tools/appliances well designed for their specific need. The apps in the apple app store follow this analogy in microcosm, and the iPhone or iPad device follows it in macrocosm. Its certainly a boon for non technical users, but as a developer I don't enjoy the lockdown Apple is imposing on their development environment.
Some of their restrictions can be seen to be in place to make the platform more appliance-like (restricted multitasking, etc). But others just seem like anti-competitive practices (disallowing Flash, Monotouch, and presumably Silverlight). I'm alright with it being a limited platform, as that helps out the target demographic, but artificially limiting the developers is just poisonous and makes me want to distance myself from the company.
exactly, since the browser is used for so much of our sensitive network activity, I think we should be using the most secure technologies available to define its code that processes information from the network (pretty much everything). You are essentially running a program that is going to run arbitrary code in a sandbox on your machine. That sandbox MUST be airtight. In an evolving code base I don't think vigilance is enough to keep the sandbox well sealed. Too much is at stake to rely on dilligence. We need to be working at the correct level of abstraction to keep it secure. Its 2009, lets at least remove buffer overflow from the list of potential cracks in the sandbox.
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Could you explain concretely what you like about working with C?
:) Just glad I don't need to read their code!
I used to claim the same thing, but after years not being required to use C, in hindsight, I can chalk up every reason I enjoyed it to senseless machismo, and my most concrete memories are of all the time of mine C wasted by not warning of or preventing egregious errors from simple typographical mistakes.
I would never choose C if starting a new project, and it still baffles me that some do. But to each his own I guess
I do believe that anyone that claims to actually like working with C or C++ is either
1) Unfamiliar with any languages that don't let you shoot yourself in the face so easily.
2) More like a machine than a man.
3) Trying to show off his "hacking skillz".
4) Being overly nostalgic.
5) Hasn't actually used C or C++ in about a decade.
IMHO using C or C++ when not necessary displays a depressing amount of machismo and masochism. Why do it to yourself?
You can write managed code against the XNA framework to target both WP7 and the XBox. For the iPhone, I believe there is an option to compile the managed code to iPhone native code, but I haven't looked into it too far as of yet, believe the project is called Unity?
Shouldn't he count himself lucky people have trouble discerning fantasy from reality? Job security.
Powershell embraces a lot of functional programming paradigms rather than relegating everything to pipeline based text processing. There is a reason why its codename was "Monad". It was designed around passing objects and tables around using a common type system, to create more flexible interaction between all the different cmdlets. Anyone that has used Linq will also notice a lot of similarities on that front. Again, as I forewarned, I certainly haven't used every shell out there, so I really don't know how many of these are unique to Powershell. But I don't think it should be relegated to the knee-jerk "me too" labels people seem to want to apply to it, as it seems a good deal of thought and iteration went into its design.
Not letting the developer's use C++ actually makes me feel better about purchasing one of these. I trust a managed code sandbox more than a native code sandbox. I'd rather not have to install an anti-virus program just to feel comfortable installing apps on my phone.
The problem is that only someone handy with computers could get to that level of competence with a Windows Mobile phone. To everyone else it was an impenetrable muck, and remains so. Things have been made a little better over time by companies building interfaces on top of WM, but has never made it a friendly consumer oriented OS. I waited for a long time for a way to simply push Gmail to the darn thing and eventually had to build my own IMAP IDLE client. I bought a Windows Mobile phone because it seemed nice to develop for, but wasn't expecting to NEED to develop for it to get all the functionality I wanted.
Thankfully WP7 looks friendly to use, AND nice to develop for. Sounds good to me.
No, it's more like Windows 7 is what Windows Vista would have been if they had waited until it was done before taking it out of the oven. Blame whoever it was that decided to release Vista in the state it was in. If you do a feature to feature comparison of Vista and 7 there are not really a lot of new features, but I conclude from the generally better responsiveness I've experiences and some of the details that I've heard that a lot of work went on smoothing out the internals. Add that to the best taskbar that windows has ever had (which is much better than OSX's dock IMHO) and you have a really solid improvement over Vista. Anyone that claims 7 is Vista with a new paintjob is likely comparing only top-level features and visual style.
I second these. Powershell in particular is very excellent. Anyone who thinks its a "catch up" product should probably read into it a bit more. I can't claim to have used every shell thats out there, but it certainly seems like many of its features are innovations to me.
I would put another MS product on the top of that list though: Windows Home Server (best MS product yet). And how about some Windows Media Center love? Just because the the cable companies are trying their hardest to make CableCARD suck doesn't mean WMC isn't a fantastic product.
I agree with you about earlier versions of windows mobile being a previous Sprint PPC6700 and AT&T tilt user. They appealed to me because they were supremely easy to develop for and were much more like having a computer in your pocket than anything else at the time. Earlier versions of windows mobile were very very crap though, and I can't agree more with you on this count.
But using your experiences with WM6/6.5 and earlier to make any kind of assumption about Windows Phone 7 is like assuming you wont like the XBOX 360 because you don't like Windows ME. Other than the OS kernel I don't there is many similarities in the codebase between WP7 and earlier versions, its been designed from the ground up to be a different animal, and probably bears more resemblence to the Zune or XBox codebase than to the Windows Mobile codebase.
I like everything I hear about this new platform, but I'm not exceedingly impartial, as I'm a big fan of Silverlight and other aspects of WP7s development environment. I think its only problem, currently, is the head start the other platforms have had, and the bad taste left in everyones mouths by Kin and WM6.5 and earlier. But, personally, I think they've done enough to distance WP7 from those platforms. Lets see how it goes!
sorry for the dupe, rss version hid the other comments.
Did you know you can just hide posts from a specific application? You don't need to use the sledgehammer unless warranted.
Any attempt to do this with HTTP is just hacking the protocol to do something it was never intended to do
just like most http/javascript programming.
Problem is that it is hard to lock down what information an app can send out if it makes http requests. The request is itself a transmission of information from the client. You would have to use a much more constrained resource requesting protocol to actually prevent an application from sending sensitive data.
Not to start any arguments, but informed blu-ray consumers would have bought a Playstation 3. It was the highest rated device (maybe still is) for quite some time in terms of all number of metrics, and had built in future proofing due to Sony's need to add value to the system over time to compete with the XBox 360. Not other hardware manufacturer has that impetus to keep their various blu-ray players value competitive with anything, you've already bought the device. Consequently, blu-ray consumers that have bought the PS3, will be rewarded with 3D support. It seems like a game console is one of the safest buys you can make in electronics (apart from launch hardware defects), as the long lifecycles force the companies to add value over time. If you discount the removal of the Other OS feature (which has of course caused much ire in this hotbed of OSS villainy) and just look at the number of features included at launch for these consoles, vs today, as well as the breadth of the feature sets, it becomes hard to justify buying a set top box with dedicated function (a stand-alone blu-ray player). This may change in the future if the game consoles interfaces start to become as cluttered as windows, and we may see a resurgence of appliance style boxes to connect to TVs much like computer industry is seeing a shift to appliance style computers (iPhone, iPad), but as it stands currently, the PS3 OS is as simple to operate as the iPhone, and a good deal simpler than your standard STB, which can often require consulting the manual to determine the workflow for some features. The XBOX 360 interface however, is another matter.
Problem is, do you know what also seems to make website performance crappy? Poorly written Javascript, which is just as prevalent as Flash, IMO. The web needs languages that encourage more maintainable and efficient applications. Flash and Javascript are not the right answers here. I think Silverlight is more of a step in the right direction in terms of maintainable and fast internet apps. That or using Javascript as a bytecode rather than a development language.
I think there is something to be said in a single sandboxed platform like Flash/Silverlight being available on all hardware types to bring a guaranteed level of consistency/performance across the board. If someone designs an app in flash/silverlight/etc. they know with high certainty that it will perform and look the same way on all platforms supported by the plugin. If history is to be trusted for extrapolative purposes, the various HTML5 implementations will not offer that kind of consistency. Although, since many of the browsers use the same engines nowadays this problem is somewhat mitigated. Still, I like Adoble/Microsoft having great incentive to make sure that Flash/Silverlight content displays the same on all platforms. The browsers don't really have the same incentives. Their perfect, desired situation is to have their rendering of HTML5 vary slightly from the other contenders, and hold enough marketshare that web content is designed around their quirks, and not their competitors quirks. Its a bit of a conflict of interest, IMO.
Actually, I think the formation of iRobot may predate Apple's use of the prefix, but I'm not sure about that. And, if I had to guess, its probably a reference to the Asimov book of short stories.
The writing in the earlier seasons seemed to have much more intellectual integrity. Not sure what changed. Did someone leave the show or something? Some auditor or other writer?
I concur, sir.
I think the Lost finally was pretty obnoxious and failed to explain any of the interesting mysteries of the show. Their stance seems to be that we shouldn't try to understand the mysterious, and, rather, just let it wash over us. I just say, "No".
The problem, of course, being that their retaliation will be to cap our bandwidth. They wont sit still. So unless competition forces them to keep the bandwidth uncapped, you wont have enough bits to satisfy your video fix.
you forgot to mention that it can take any sized hdds, you don't have to match them in size or brand, and if the whole hardware fails the files are just stored in a regular ntfs partition. So you can just mount it on a normal windows/linux/etc box to grab files off the drives. Very cool. That and its easy to migrate drives between different hardware since its a software based solution.
I would call hardware like the iPad a computer appliance. When people buy tools for their tool shed or household items, they know that if they buy something that tries to do everything, usually it will suck at most things it does. So they buy targeted tools/appliances well designed for their specific need. The apps in the apple app store follow this analogy in microcosm, and the iPhone or iPad device follows it in macrocosm. Its certainly a boon for non technical users, but as a developer I don't enjoy the lockdown Apple is imposing on their development environment. Some of their restrictions can be seen to be in place to make the platform more appliance-like (restricted multitasking, etc). But others just seem like anti-competitive practices (disallowing Flash, Monotouch, and presumably Silverlight). I'm alright with it being a limited platform, as that helps out the target demographic, but artificially limiting the developers is just poisonous and makes me want to distance myself from the company.
exactly, since the browser is used for so much of our sensitive network activity, I think we should be using the most secure technologies available to define its code that processes information from the network (pretty much everything). You are essentially running a program that is going to run arbitrary code in a sandbox on your machine. That sandbox MUST be airtight. In an evolving code base I don't think vigilance is enough to keep the sandbox well sealed. Too much is at stake to rely on dilligence. We need to be working at the correct level of abstraction to keep it secure. Its 2009, lets at least remove buffer overflow from the list of potential cracks in the sandbox.