Let the reader be warned that the two articles linked to from the summary are a gushing review by a Mozilla employee and an interview with the Mozilla CTO.
Even so, how many operating systems announced lately are saying that their API is basically HTML, CSS, or JavaScript? Google Chrome OS, Tizen, node.js, Blackberry 10 (sort of at least?), Windows 8 Metro, and now Firefox OS.
DISCLAIMER: I am a web programmer. (And right now, I'm happy to be one.)
Standard response to the myriad complaints about having to use JavaScript: JavaScript, as a language, is nice. Its history is tainted by incomplete browser implementations, namely Microsoft's. Also, its low level of entry flooded the web with really bad examples. If you really want to learn JavaScript, read JavaScript: The Definitive Guide or JavaScript: The Good Parts.
Yes, "post-PC world" is true only for the world of consumer computing, not professional computing.
In the beginning, all computers were professional. Nobody used a computer for fun (unless you thought programming was fun).
Then, in the PC explosion in the 80s, computers became fun for everyone --- but still in a handicapped way. You had to sit at a desk and use a keyboard and mouse to have that fun.
Now, you can easily plop on the couch or sit in a cafe or just step outside on break.
But yeah, forcing programmers, accountants, and scientists to use phones and tablets would be a step backward for them.
To me, JSON very interesting. I don't know how exactly I'll use it, but it combines all that's great about PostgreSQL with some of what was interesting about CouchDB and other projects like it.
Mainly, one-to-many relationships may be easier. Usually, they are two separate select statements. For example, one to get the article, another to get the comments. Then you patch it all together in PHP, or whatever middle language you're using. With JSON support, that could be a single SELECT, crammed up in JSON, which you then uncram with a single json_decode function call in PHP, which would yield nice nested arrays.
PostgreSQL replication is new (revision 9.1) so there may be little out there (Yes, there was replication, but with additional software, like Slony).
I'm in the weird position of having used PostgreSQL mainly --- for seven years, writing dozens of applications --- but never MySQL. I've also used --- out of necessity only --- Microsoft SQL, Oracle, and Ingres, and PostgreSQL is much better. Just from a programming point of view, the syntax is, in my mind, simpler yet more powerful --- more ANSI-SQL-compliant, too, I've heard.
Anyway, the point is, I've never used anything I like more. I adore PostgreSQL. It's so powerful. So many useful datatypes, functions, syntax. Not to mention it's ACIDity.
To your question, though --- are there any good books to help a MySQLite move to PostgreSQL? Not that I've come across. But then again, I haven't found any good PostgreSQL books --- or even, for that matter, very well-written SQL books, period. They all are stupefyingly boring --- but I got what I could out of them.
Actually, PostgreSQL's documentation is not that bad. In particular, try sections I, II, V, VI, and III, in that order. Skip anything that bores you at first. You can always come back. Honestly, there can't be that much of a learning curve for you, coming from MySQL.
This is a terribly written summary! What's the video about? The only sentence that tells is the middle one, and it is vague. Here is a rewritten summary, putting facts in the order that a reader needs to know them:
Order should not be brought to the Internet, said Josh Corman, Director of Security Intelligence at Akamai, in this talk at CodenomiCON 2012, in Las Vegas. (Transcript unavailable, due to licensing.)
That's the best I can do based on the facts in the summary. I could watch the video and come up with a better one, but I'm not sure it's worth 20 minutes of my time.
I agree with what everyone has said here. You don't need to know advanced math, but it may help you write more efficient programs.
I make business web applications. The bulk of the work is shuffling data in and out of the database and displaying it. Calculations are mainly string comparisons, sorting, and filtering. When math does come into play, it's usually addition ($i++), subtraction ($i--), or multiplication ($interval = 365 * 24 * 60 * 60). And as you can see, you're hardly even doing math. I don't actually do the multiplication, I just need to be able to type it out.
The most advanced math I've done is the use of the modulo operator. I didn't even learn that in school, but it pops up in programming.
Coincidentally, today I used math to figure out just how big the namespace is. If you restricted yourself to just lower-case letters, and 25 characters or less, that's 6 undecillion possible names (26^25). Granted, most of them are of limited use, like xkkxxkl, but it sure makes me worry a little less about name collisions.
Even so, all this talk about math makes me hungry to learn it. I really can't remember anything from my calculus class in college, and this discussion makes me want to pick up a book on the subject. I'm sure it would make me a better programmer just by stretching my mind a little.
English has unusually broad origins: Anglo-Saxon, Norman French, Latin, and Greek. And for no good reason. It's entirely an artifact of its political history.
So, there is a lot of redundancy. Several words that mean the same thing yet someone says they all have different shades of meaning. Sometime true, like the difference between imply and infer. Other times, they are just all the same word, one Anglo-Saxon, one Latin, one Greek. It's like importing the Spanish word for dog, perro, and using dog sometimes and sometimes perro and claiming subtle shifts in meaning.
The author claims one advantage of jargon is brevity. Sometimes that's true. But the words of jargon typically are Latin, which always has more syllables than Anglo-Saxon. So if you measure the length by units of sound --- which more closely follows how much brainpower it takes to process a word --- and not by "words" of arbitrary length, then the jargonless version is usually shorter.
The worst is how scientists make up a new name using several long words. Then, since the phrase is too tiresome to write or say daily, they take turn it into an acronym, thus absolutely sealing its meaning. For example, when I was working as a technical writer describing a network, I remember unravelling Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA). "Carrier Sense" means "listening." "Multiple Access" means several are talking. So its a way for several to talk in the same room by first listening to make sure no one else already is saying something. Had they called it Listen-First Group Talk (5 syllables) instead of Carrier Sense Multiple Access (9 syllables) then technicians and laymen alike could grasp it on first hearing, and it would less likely have been acronymized, since it's just one more syllable than a four-letter acronym.
with a few lines of PHP (or some equivalent back-end language) you can have a look at the user's browser USERAGENT string, figure out if it's an MSIE browser or not and serve the preferable version of jQuery... 1.9 for legacy IE, 2.0 for IE9 and for standards compliant browsers.
Or do it with HTML comments (this actually works):
We're at a stage in the computer industry where innovation is the LAST thing we need. What we need is bug fixes and "refinement". . . . Apple isn't redesigning OS X every 2 years. They're tweaking it an making it better.
Agreed. I keep hearing these lies:
Apple is successful because it's innovative? Apple never came up with anything.
Apple's strength has always been its execution. Steve Jobs's biography makes it clear that his talent was refining, refining, refining --- long beyond the patience and courage of most corporate leaders.
It's so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.)
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.
Explanation:
AWFUL IDEA = -1
WEAK IDEA = 1
SO-SO IDEA = 5
GOOD IDEA = 10
GREAT IDEA = 15
BRILLIANT IDEA = 20
NO EXECUTION = $1
WEAK EXECUTION = $1000
SO-SO EXECUTION = $10,000
GOOD EXECUTION = $100,000
GREAT EXECUTION = $1,000,000
BRILLIANT EXECUTION = $10,000,000
To make a business, you need to multiply the two.
The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20.
The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.
That's why I don't want to hear people's ideas.
I'm not interested until I see their execution.
Microsoft used to be great but lost its way? It can become better again? Microsoft is great in size alone. It has never been innovative or, like Apple, good at execution. Which of any of their products in their entire history was new? Or which of any of their products won out because, like Apple, they executed best on an idea already out there? No, the reason Microsoft has been successful is because of the lucky break IBM first gave them, which Microsoft cemented with a variety of techniques, none of which were (a) innovation or (b) execution.
Neither innovation nor execution have ever been part of Microsoft's culture. John Sculley tells this story:
Well, I'll tell you a great story that a friend of mine told me. I won't tell you his name because I think he wouldn't like it. But he was doing business with both Apple and Microsoft, doing peripheral products for one of their products in each company. And he was at an Apple meeting. He goes in at the Infinite Loop, in their headquarters in Cupertino. Everyone's sitting around talking in the room. In walks Johnny Ives, head of design, the room goes quiet. Everyone waits to hear what Johnny Ive has to say. Why? Because they know Johnny speaks for Steve. Design is at the top of the priorities at Apple. Some days later he was up at Microsoft. Goes in. This is with the Zune group, a large group of really smart people in the room talking with each other. No designer walks in because there is no such thing. And the meeting then goes into people negotiating with each other. "Well, I'll support your feature if you'll support mine."
Y'all really should read the article before commenting.
Cringely does not say we won't need keyboards, mice, and large screens someday. He devotes several sentences about wireless docking stations. He says already it's only $150 for a decent screen, keyboard, and mouse, and that's what we'll have at the office. We'll dock our phones to it, he says.
Which is where he might be wrong. In another paragraph he talks about how the cloud is making computers disposable. So, why not just have a whole computer that you leave at the office? For only a little more money, you can have a CPU and memory, instead of just a docking station.
I find it fun to point out the hypocrisy of companies that rail against software patents while applying for them at the same time. Google does this...
As defense
Patents were not meant to protect services but manufacturing ideas.
Interesting.
we are even outsourcing our services now. What will be left?
Well, I think the design of things can be kept. Once you outsource that, you've outsourced it all. Design is the highest job, I think. You can outsource and computerize repetitive tasks, but --- as Apple, for example, has shown --- the design makes all the difference.
I like the new flat and clean window borders. But they didn't update the icons. They're the curved and glossy ones, with drop shadows, from Windows 7. So, it all clashes. It would look ten times better if they updated the icons to something like the KDE Reinhardt icon set (which also happens to be my favorite set ever).
Python, Perl, PHP, or some other server-side language
SQL*
* Yes, or NoSQL, but I'm not sure I would recommend it.
After working on 40 web applications over 7 years, I have found that it's best to push things to the edges, and do as much as you can in the top layer (CSS, HTML, and JavaScript) or bottom (SQL). The middle layer, where you must decide between Java, Python, Perl, Python, Scala, or several other server-side languages, I try to keep as thin as I possibly can --- more like a glue (or duct tape?) between the client and database.
It takes the most learning to do it this way. You must know JavaScript, HTML, and CSS well (jQuery helps). And you must also know advanced features of your database (I recommend SQLite or PostgreSQL). But it typically leads to lightweight, efficient apps.
I don't know why, but maybe slower frame rates are more comfortable for seeing movies, and not just because we're used to it.
Consider the scenes you've seen --- perhaps in a music video or something --- when they added a "strobe" special effect, where the frame-per-second was even lower, like 12. What was your emotional reaction? For me, such an effect lends a certain "coolness," or respect. Even the most droll actions suddenly seem "cool" and significant.
Seasoned programmers say learning how to adjust the layout of a Web page is one thing, but picking up the skills required to develop a sophisticated online service or mobile application is an entirely different challenge. That is the kind of technical education that cannot be acquired by casual use for a few hours at night and on the weekends, they say.
I have to agree. I've been making web apps full-time for seven years, and I'm still learning. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, Apache, Linux, all the different browser quirks. . . . it's a lot to learn.
The only reason that streaming services haven't completely phased out Blu-rays is the fact that a majority of the consumers don't have a fast and reliable Internet connection.
Only a fraction of movies are streamable yet. Far more are still only on disc. I have a fast and reliable Internet connection, and yet no connection to most of the movies I want to watch.
Slashdot Mirror
Let the reader be warned that the two articles linked to from the summary are a gushing review by a Mozilla employee and an interview with the Mozilla CTO.
Even so, how many operating systems announced lately are saying that their API is basically HTML, CSS, or JavaScript? Google Chrome OS, Tizen, node.js, Blackberry 10 (sort of at least?), Windows 8 Metro, and now Firefox OS.
DISCLAIMER: I am a web programmer. (And right now, I'm happy to be one.)
Standard response to the myriad complaints about having to use JavaScript: JavaScript, as a language, is nice. Its history is tainted by incomplete browser implementations, namely Microsoft's. Also, its low level of entry flooded the web with really bad examples. If you really want to learn JavaScript, read JavaScript: The Definitive Guide or JavaScript: The Good Parts.
Yes, "post-PC world" is true only for the world of consumer computing, not professional computing.
In the beginning, all computers were professional. Nobody used a computer for fun (unless you thought programming was fun).
Then, in the PC explosion in the 80s, computers became fun for everyone --- but still in a handicapped way. You had to sit at a desk and use a keyboard and mouse to have that fun.
Now, you can easily plop on the couch or sit in a cafe or just step outside on break.
But yeah, forcing programmers, accountants, and scientists to use phones and tablets would be a step backward for them.
To me, JSON very interesting. I don't know how exactly I'll use it, but it combines all that's great about PostgreSQL with some of what was interesting about CouchDB and other projects like it.
Mainly, one-to-many relationships may be easier. Usually, they are two separate select statements. For example, one to get the article, another to get the comments. Then you patch it all together in PHP, or whatever middle language you're using. With JSON support, that could be a single SELECT, crammed up in JSON, which you then uncram with a single json_decode function call in PHP, which would yield nice nested arrays.
PostgreSQL replication is new (revision 9.1) so there may be little out there (Yes, there was replication, but with additional software, like Slony).
I'm in the weird position of having used PostgreSQL mainly --- for seven years, writing dozens of applications --- but never MySQL. I've also used --- out of necessity only --- Microsoft SQL, Oracle, and Ingres, and PostgreSQL is much better. Just from a programming point of view, the syntax is, in my mind, simpler yet more powerful --- more ANSI-SQL-compliant, too, I've heard.
Anyway, the point is, I've never used anything I like more. I adore PostgreSQL. It's so powerful. So many useful datatypes, functions, syntax. Not to mention it's ACIDity.
To your question, though --- are there any good books to help a MySQLite move to PostgreSQL? Not that I've come across. But then again, I haven't found any good PostgreSQL books --- or even, for that matter, very well-written SQL books, period. They all are stupefyingly boring --- but I got what I could out of them.
Actually, PostgreSQL's documentation is not that bad. In particular, try sections I, II, V, VI, and III, in that order. Skip anything that bores you at first. You can always come back. Honestly, there can't be that much of a learning curve for you, coming from MySQL.
This is a terribly written summary! What's the video about? The only sentence that tells is the middle one, and it is vague. Here is a rewritten summary, putting facts in the order that a reader needs to know them:
Order should not be brought to the Internet, said Josh Corman, Director of Security Intelligence at Akamai, in this talk at CodenomiCON 2012, in Las Vegas. (Transcript unavailable, due to licensing.)
That's the best I can do based on the facts in the summary. I could watch the video and come up with a better one, but I'm not sure it's worth 20 minutes of my time.
No
I agree with what everyone has said here. You don't need to know advanced math, but it may help you write more efficient programs.
I make business web applications. The bulk of the work is shuffling data in and out of the database and displaying it. Calculations are mainly string comparisons, sorting, and filtering. When math does come into play, it's usually addition ($i++), subtraction ($i--), or multiplication ($interval = 365 * 24 * 60 * 60). And as you can see, you're hardly even doing math. I don't actually do the multiplication, I just need to be able to type it out.
The most advanced math I've done is the use of the modulo operator. I didn't even learn that in school, but it pops up in programming.
Coincidentally, today I used math to figure out just how big the namespace is. If you restricted yourself to just lower-case letters, and 25 characters or less, that's 6 undecillion possible names (26^25). Granted, most of them are of limited use, like xkkxxkl, but it sure makes me worry a little less about name collisions.
Even so, all this talk about math makes me hungry to learn it. I really can't remember anything from my calculus class in college, and this discussion makes me want to pick up a book on the subject. I'm sure it would make me a better programmer just by stretching my mind a little.
English has unusually broad origins: Anglo-Saxon, Norman French, Latin, and Greek. And for no good reason. It's entirely an artifact of its political history.
So, there is a lot of redundancy. Several words that mean the same thing yet someone says they all have different shades of meaning. Sometime true, like the difference between imply and infer. Other times, they are just all the same word, one Anglo-Saxon, one Latin, one Greek. It's like importing the Spanish word for dog, perro, and using dog sometimes and sometimes perro and claiming subtle shifts in meaning.
The author claims one advantage of jargon is brevity. Sometimes that's true. But the words of jargon typically are Latin, which always has more syllables than Anglo-Saxon. So if you measure the length by units of sound --- which more closely follows how much brainpower it takes to process a word --- and not by "words" of arbitrary length, then the jargonless version is usually shorter.
The worst is how scientists make up a new name using several long words. Then, since the phrase is too tiresome to write or say daily, they take turn it into an acronym, thus absolutely sealing its meaning. For example, when I was working as a technical writer describing a network, I remember unravelling Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA). "Carrier Sense" means "listening." "Multiple Access" means several are talking. So its a way for several to talk in the same room by first listening to make sure no one else already is saying something. Had they called it Listen-First Group Talk (5 syllables) instead of Carrier Sense Multiple Access (9 syllables) then technicians and laymen alike could grasp it on first hearing, and it would less likely have been acronymized, since it's just one more syllable than a four-letter acronym.
From the summary:
In designing their model, the scientists chose an approach that parallels the design of modern software systems, known as object-oriented programming.
No wonder the program is enormous!
with a few lines of PHP (or some equivalent back-end language) you can have a look at the user's browser USERAGENT string, figure out if it's an MSIE browser or not and serve the preferable version of jQuery... 1.9 for legacy IE, 2.0 for IE9 and for standards compliant browsers.
Or do it with HTML comments (this actually works):
<!--[if lt IE 9]>
<script src="jquery-1.9.0.js"></script>
<![endif]-->
<!--[if gte IE 9]><!-->
<script src="jquery-2.0.0.js"><</script>
<!--<![endif]-->
Less code. Also you've offloaded the CPU processing from your server to the user's browser.
This was in the article by the way. . . . Oh . . . nevermind.
We're at a stage in the computer industry where innovation is the LAST thing we need. What we need is bug fixes and "refinement". . . . Apple isn't redesigning OS X every 2 years. They're tweaking it an making it better.
Agreed. I keep hearing these lies:
Apple is successful because it's innovative? Apple never came up with anything.
Apple's strength has always been its execution. Steve Jobs's biography makes it clear that his talent was refining, refining, refining --- long beyond the patience and courage of most corporate leaders.
As Derek Sivers said, ideas are just multipliers:
It's so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.)
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.
Explanation:
AWFUL IDEA = -1
WEAK IDEA = 1
SO-SO IDEA = 5
GOOD IDEA = 10
GREAT IDEA = 15
BRILLIANT IDEA = 20
NO EXECUTION = $1
WEAK EXECUTION = $1000
SO-SO EXECUTION = $10,000
GOOD EXECUTION = $100,000
GREAT EXECUTION = $1,000,000
BRILLIANT EXECUTION = $10,000,000
To make a business, you need to multiply the two.
The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20.
The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.
That's why I don't want to hear people's ideas.
I'm not interested until I see their execution.
Microsoft used to be great but lost its way? It can become better again? Microsoft is great in size alone. It has never been innovative or, like Apple, good at execution. Which of any of their products in their entire history was new? Or which of any of their products won out because, like Apple, they executed best on an idea already out there? No, the reason Microsoft has been successful is because of the lucky break IBM first gave them, which Microsoft cemented with a variety of techniques, none of which were (a) innovation or (b) execution.
Neither innovation nor execution have ever been part of Microsoft's culture. John Sculley tells this story:
Well, I'll tell you a great story that a friend of mine told me. I won't tell you his name because I think he wouldn't like it. But he was doing business with both Apple and Microsoft, doing peripheral products for one of their products in each company. And he was at an Apple meeting. He goes in at the Infinite Loop, in their headquarters in Cupertino. Everyone's sitting around talking in the room. In walks Johnny Ives, head of design, the room goes quiet. Everyone waits to hear what Johnny Ive has to say. Why? Because they know Johnny speaks for Steve. Design is at the top of the priorities at Apple. Some days later he was up at Microsoft. Goes in. This is with the Zune group, a large group of really smart people in the room talking with each other. No designer walks in because there is no such thing. And the meeting then goes into people negotiating with each other. "Well, I'll support your feature if you'll support mine."
--- How do Apple's and Microsoft's corporate cultures reflect their products?
That could change some day at Microsoft (anything is possible) but it won't under Steve Ballmer's watch.
Innovation is not the reason any of the leading tech companies are the leading
It implies malice where logically none exists.
It infers malice, you villain, you!
Y'all really should read the article before commenting.
Cringely does not say we won't need keyboards, mice, and large screens someday. He devotes several sentences about wireless docking stations. He says already it's only $150 for a decent screen, keyboard, and mouse, and that's what we'll have at the office. We'll dock our phones to it, he says.
Which is where he might be wrong. In another paragraph he talks about how the cloud is making computers disposable. So, why not just have a whole computer that you leave at the office? For only a little more money, you can have a CPU and memory, instead of just a docking station.
I find it fun to point out the hypocrisy of companies that rail against software patents while applying for them at the same time. Google does this ...
As defense
Patents were not meant to protect services but manufacturing ideas.
Interesting.
we are even outsourcing our services now. What will be left?
Well, I think the design of things can be kept. Once you outsource that, you've outsourced it all. Design is the highest job, I think. You can outsource and computerize repetitive tasks, but --- as Apple, for example, has shown --- the design makes all the difference.
I like the new flat and clean window borders. But they didn't update the icons. They're the curved and glossy ones, with drop shadows, from Windows 7. So, it all clashes. It would look ten times better if they updated the icons to something like the KDE Reinhardt icon set (which also happens to be my favorite set ever).
Web development takes several languages:
* Yes, or NoSQL, but I'm not sure I would recommend it.
After working on 40 web applications over 7 years, I have found that it's best to push things to the edges, and do as much as you can in the top layer (CSS, HTML, and JavaScript) or bottom (SQL). The middle layer, where you must decide between Java, Python, Perl, Python, Scala, or several other server-side languages, I try to keep as thin as I possibly can --- more like a glue (or duct tape?) between the client and database.
It takes the most learning to do it this way. You must know JavaScript, HTML, and CSS well (jQuery helps). And you must also know advanced features of your database (I recommend SQLite or PostgreSQL). But it typically leads to lightweight, efficient apps.
I don't know why, but maybe slower frame rates are more comfortable for seeing movies, and not just because we're used to it.
Consider the scenes you've seen --- perhaps in a music video or something --- when they added a "strobe" special effect, where the frame-per-second was even lower, like 12. What was your emotional reaction? For me, such an effect lends a certain "coolness," or respect. Even the most droll actions suddenly seem "cool" and significant.
From the article:
I have to agree. I've been making web apps full-time for seven years, and I'm still learning. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, Apache, Linux, all the different browser quirks. . . . it's a lot to learn.
Only a fraction of movies are streamable yet. Far more are still only on disc. I have a fast and reliable Internet connection, and yet no connection to most of the movies I want to watch.
"I know an old lady who swallowed a fly . . . "
Loading . . .
First post!
Ah, nuts
Douglas Crockford's JavaScript
JavaScript: The Definitive Guide
http://toys.lerdorf.com/archives/38-The-no-framework-PHP-MVC-framework.html
Well, wouldn't you know, David Pogue, of the New York Times, just published an article about this: Three Small Cameras Come Up Big in Photo Quality
It could just be part of Larry Page's first year as CEO. Google may or may not keep shuttering projects at this rate.