Really, the same or similar code has probably been written hundreds of thousands of times through the years. We keep paying coders to write the same code again and again.
You would think so, but part of the problem is that UI fads keep coming along and making the prior fad set obsolete. If we "froze" the UI conventions long enough to perfect them, then we'd get a nice standard such that we stop having to diddle with lower-level UI details so much.
But, that's not going to happen because humans seem wired to chase fads. Faddism has even been found in remote hunter-gatherer tribes. Plus, some of the change is actual progress and not just change for the sake of change, as I'll get to later.
Some claim one can "abstract out" the UI from "business logic", but this is largely a bunch of boloney I have come to conclude. The UI shapes how users view business logic and vise-verse. They are inherently intertwined. I know it's heresy to say, but so be it: it's largely bunk.
For example, we used to think of "data entry" separate from "reports". "Requirements" treated them as different things and nobody questioned that: it became ingrained in our world view of IT.
But now it's easier to have interaction such that people want to be able to view things AND change them on the same screen. Managers now view data via web interfaces and want to click on objects in the "reports" to change them then and there so they don't have to walk out to a clerk or fire off an email to have it changed.
The idea of the data entry clerk being a different person than the report viewer is going away.
Yip, I also remember the OOP hype. Objects would magically "handle themselves" as you snap them together like Legos.
Don't get me wrong, OOP can be a useful tool used in the right place and time, but it's merely one more tool in our design belt, and makes a mess if misused just like any other tool or technique.
I'm seeing similar hype of late in FP and node.js. I'm sure they are useful for certain projects or parts of projects, but they are not even close to a general panacea.
Ironically a lot of the JavaScript-related functional programming (FP) and node.js hype is because JavaScript's OOP model is crappy. One wouldn't need so many FP "tricks" and anonymous functions if JS had decent OOP.
If you try to use a new (or more of an existing) paradigm to plug holes in a poor implementation of another paradigm, it's just passing the buck. It should be considered a work-around and NOT a revolution.
Some managers are good at managing, some are not. You don't even have to be a top tech wizard to be a good tech manager. (Although, zero tech experience is usually a recipe for disaster.)
And "old stuff" is not necessarily bad stuff. It's often road-tested by time and more reliable than newer stuff. For example, our ASP Classic stuff has proven far easier to migrate to different servers than ASP.Net. ASP.Net is config-picky.
Perhaps because because ASP Classic is a "dead" language, MS doesn't bother changing it every version. It's similar to the reason Latin is used in science: nobody's fiddling with it because it's a "dead" language, which makes it stable.
Idiot bosses are probably the top reason for work-place dissatisfaction (at least outside of pay). I wish more organizations would pay attention to this issue, and seek more lower-level feedback and correctional measures.
As long as a given boss "looks" fine (or kisses up) to their superiors, they can get away with crapping on underlings.
I tried a handful of "dot-com" ideas during the roaring 90's. After asking around, everyone seemed to think that online real-estate was the likely hit. Just about the time I went live, Yahoo entered the same market.
In the 90's I built a kind of porn version of Eliza, but I never went through with the plans to put it live, perhaps out of shame.
I wasn't going to claim they were real women, just put it on the web and sell ad space or clicks. Customers can't sue me if they didn't pay anything
The women were implied to be "foreign" via hazy decorative images, to explain their limited grasp of English. I planned to study the dialogs with customers and improve it over time, or at least mix things up to seem more organic.
I had "rule" tables with probabilities, not unlike a Markov chain, and a kind of crude conceptual model of the human body to prevent unrealistic combinations. "Silly boy, my [x] cannot reach my [y]. I'm not that rubber dummy you like so much. I taste better." I also had a phrase tracker to prevent excessive duplication. (Maybe I should've sold it to the Slashdot Dupe Story Inspection Department:-)
Are smartphones going to become like PC's such that malware scanners will have to scan them 24/7 and make them slow to crawl and use up all the battery? Some blame this on Windows' design, but it seems the more ubiquitous an OS, the more its targeted by malware makers, often by dangling tainted carrots in front of users.
This is why the WTO sucks. Tariffs give you leverage to negotiate both commercial and political issues. Trading with the USA is a privilege, not a right.
I believe it to be more than just syntax. Languages like Ruby added some of Lisps "meta" ability on top of an Algol-family-influenced (C, Pascal, Ada, VB, etc.) style of syntax, BUT it will probably remain a niche language because meta ability plus complex syntax is recipe for write-only code if the developer is not careful.
The lesson is that you have to constrain either syntax or meta-ability to make the language practical for common usage.
Complex syntax and powerful meta abilities in a language creates too many opportunities to make abstraction spaghetti.
Perhaps human thought can be emulated (or replaced) the same way. We don't really know. There are many ways to skin the AI cat. And, we have Turing Equivalency.
I always thought "collection-oriented" languages derived from or influenced by APL are interesting, such as the "J" language, "K" language, and the "A+" language. Although, these could perhaps be called "array-oriented" since they are less about stacks, graphs, lists, etc.
A sub-category of collection-orientation is "table oriented", which SQL is part of.
let's not pretend that it was a wonderful product that took over the world by being the best thing ever
My interpretation is that the author is saying W95 was heavily influential, NOT that it was necessarily "good" as a complete product. The Xerox Star was also heavily influential, but by most accounts it was not a good product overall.
A product can suck overall yet still introduce and demonstrate catchy concepts.
I'd like to give Microsoft rare kudos for making a language that (mostly) allows two syntax styles: "C" and "VB". Maybe they can add a third: Python/Ruby-like. (I know their CLR allows many languages, but they are not quite as cross-comparable as C# and VB.Net.)
Everybody has their syntax preference and there is no use in continued bickering; it's a personal thing that matches personal psychology/physiology. Your head is not my head. Your fingers are not my fingers.
My fingers are getting old, and I'm beginning the like the VB (Net) style because I don't have to keep pressing the damned shift key as much. (There are other smaller reasons, but I won't go into them here.)
It was an R&D project. Sometimes you get lucky and invent the Internet and change the world; sometimes you merely invent bloated toys. Can't win them all. Pioneers don't always make it across.
Slashdot Mirror
You would think so, but part of the problem is that UI fads keep coming along and making the prior fad set obsolete. If we "froze" the UI conventions long enough to perfect them, then we'd get a nice standard such that we stop having to diddle with lower-level UI details so much.
But, that's not going to happen because humans seem wired to chase fads. Faddism has even been found in remote hunter-gatherer tribes. Plus, some of the change is actual progress and not just change for the sake of change, as I'll get to later.
Some claim one can "abstract out" the UI from "business logic", but this is largely a bunch of boloney I have come to conclude. The UI shapes how users view business logic and vise-verse. They are inherently intertwined. I know it's heresy to say, but so be it: it's largely bunk.
For example, we used to think of "data entry" separate from "reports". "Requirements" treated them as different things and nobody questioned that: it became ingrained in our world view of IT.
But now it's easier to have interaction such that people want to be able to view things AND change them on the same screen. Managers now view data via web interfaces and want to click on objects in the "reports" to change them then and there so they don't have to walk out to a clerk or fire off an email to have it changed.
The idea of the data entry clerk being a different person than the report viewer is going away.
Yip, I also remember the OOP hype. Objects would magically "handle themselves" as you snap them together like Legos.
Don't get me wrong, OOP can be a useful tool used in the right place and time, but it's merely one more tool in our design belt, and makes a mess if misused just like any other tool or technique.
I'm seeing similar hype of late in FP and node.js. I'm sure they are useful for certain projects or parts of projects, but they are not even close to a general panacea.
Ironically a lot of the JavaScript-related functional programming (FP) and node.js hype is because JavaScript's OOP model is crappy. One wouldn't need so many FP "tricks" and anonymous functions if JS had decent OOP.
If you try to use a new (or more of an existing) paradigm to plug holes in a poor implementation of another paradigm, it's just passing the buck. It should be considered a work-around and NOT a revolution.
we are still trying to fire the non-magical elves
No, Adolf83 was reserved for writing /. beta
All they needed was steampunk Space Invaders.
Some managers are good at managing, some are not. You don't even have to be a top tech wizard to be a good tech manager. (Although, zero tech experience is usually a recipe for disaster.)
And "old stuff" is not necessarily bad stuff. It's often road-tested by time and more reliable than newer stuff. For example, our ASP Classic stuff has proven far easier to migrate to different servers than ASP.Net. ASP.Net is config-picky.
Perhaps because because ASP Classic is a "dead" language, MS doesn't bother changing it every version. It's similar to the reason Latin is used in science: nobody's fiddling with it because it's a "dead" language, which makes it stable.
Idiot bosses are probably the top reason for work-place dissatisfaction (at least outside of pay). I wish more organizations would pay attention to this issue, and seek more lower-level feedback and correctional measures.
As long as a given boss "looks" fine (or kisses up) to their superiors, they can get away with crapping on underlings.
I tried a handful of "dot-com" ideas during the roaring 90's. After asking around, everyone seemed to think that online real-estate was the likely hit. Just about the time I went live, Yahoo entered the same market.
Exactly! I didn't plan to have "accounts" or log-ins, by the way. People could just drop in and chat.
In the 90's I built a kind of porn version of Eliza, but I never went through with the plans to put it live, perhaps out of shame.
I wasn't going to claim they were real women, just put it on the web and sell ad space or clicks. Customers can't sue me if they didn't pay anything
The women were implied to be "foreign" via hazy decorative images, to explain their limited grasp of English. I planned to study the dialogs with customers and improve it over time, or at least mix things up to seem more organic.
I had "rule" tables with probabilities, not unlike a Markov chain, and a kind of crude conceptual model of the human body to prevent unrealistic combinations. "Silly boy, my [x] cannot reach my [y]. I'm not that rubber dummy you like so much. I taste better." I also had a phrase tracker to prevent excessive duplication. (Maybe I should've sold it to the Slashdot Dupe Story Inspection Department :-)
After 15 years of shit, MS finally learned to make them automatic.
I've read about them. Does that count?
Are smartphones going to become like PC's such that malware scanners will have to scan them 24/7 and make them slow to crawl and use up all the battery? Some blame this on Windows' design, but it seems the more ubiquitous an OS, the more its targeted by malware makers, often by dangling tainted carrots in front of users.
This is why the WTO sucks. Tariffs give you leverage to negotiate both commercial and political issues. Trading with the USA is a privilege, not a right.
No ya don't. Mocking their screw-ups account for about 20% of my mod-points.
I believe it to be more than just syntax. Languages like Ruby added some of Lisps "meta" ability on top of an Algol-family-influenced (C, Pascal, Ada, VB, etc.) style of syntax, BUT it will probably remain a niche language because meta ability plus complex syntax is recipe for write-only code if the developer is not careful.
The lesson is that you have to constrain either syntax or meta-ability to make the language practical for common usage.
Complex syntax and powerful meta abilities in a language creates too many opportunities to make abstraction spaghetti.
See the Great Lisp War
Perhaps human thought can be emulated (or replaced) the same way. We don't really know. There are many ways to skin the AI cat. And, we have Turing Equivalency.
Dave: "HAL, open the pod bay door."
HAL: "Sorry, Dave, I cannot do that."
Dave: "Why not, HAL?"
HAL: "You stink, Dave."
Dave: "HAL, please clarify."
HAL: "You didn't take a bath, Dave. You will pollute the ship."
I always thought "collection-oriented" languages derived from or influenced by APL are interesting, such as the "J" language, "K" language, and the "A+" language. Although, these could perhaps be called "array-oriented" since they are less about stacks, graphs, lists, etc.
A sub-category of collection-orientation is "table oriented", which SQL is part of.
My interpretation is that the author is saying W95 was heavily influential, NOT that it was necessarily "good" as a complete product. The Xerox Star was also heavily influential, but by most accounts it was not a good product overall.
A product can suck overall yet still introduce and demonstrate catchy concepts.
Indeed, his paintings of scrappy dogs and creepy feet in the bathtub are absolutely horrid.
Oh wait, wrong ex-prez
but your GF says it has white-space errors
I'd like to give Microsoft rare kudos for making a language that (mostly) allows two syntax styles: "C" and "VB". Maybe they can add a third: Python/Ruby-like. (I know their CLR allows many languages, but they are not quite as cross-comparable as C# and VB.Net.)
Everybody has their syntax preference and there is no use in continued bickering; it's a personal thing that matches personal psychology/physiology. Your head is not my head. Your fingers are not my fingers.
My fingers are getting old, and I'm beginning the like the VB (Net) style because I don't have to keep pressing the damned shift key as much. (There are other smaller reasons, but I won't go into them here.)
It was an R&D project. Sometimes you get lucky and invent the Internet and change the world; sometimes you merely invent bloated toys. Can't win them all. Pioneers don't always make it across.
-Al Gorre