OK, maybe I was a bit hasty to say the marketplace has given nothing without qualifying that.
The marketplace has indirectly caused some things. However, it is still individual people who create ideas. Maybe the marketplace can be a reasonable way to motivate people but it is not a principle that should be used as a foundation. The marketplace is not the foundation for something that should be called "science".
The free movement of ideas always trumps restrictions on ideas in terms of innovation and quality. So let Open Source be tested in the marketplace, not in the pulpit!
Why do people so obsess over the marketplace? It's as though they feel it embodies everything -- reality, morality, existance. It serves to disempower people. When someone believes that something is right not because it is profitable, but because it is right, they are dismissed by the idea of the marketplace. When a people try to decide what they want from their society and economy (often through the government) they are said to hinder the marketplace, as though it has some higher moral standing.
The marketplace has given us no ideas, no beauty, no creation. People have given us those things -- often in disregard of the marketplace which can offer only material rewards.
So, to hell with the marketplace. Even in the most utopian of marketplace ideals, it is dull and dead. Thankfully not everyone has given up on thought and, yes, morallity for the seductive void of the marketplace.
I know I certainly am not tired of moralizing:)
Censorship on Slashdot!
on
RMS on APSL
·
· Score: 1
I searched for Score:-1 and most of the posts were inflamatory or kind of boring, not particularly pro-Mac.
Maybe you were reading something into it that wasn't there, or more likely some moderators looked into it and it got corrected. With the oodles of moderators there now are I expect things like this can get corrected fairly quickly.
(I didn't check non-top-level posts, but moderation/threshold doesn't work terribly well for that anyway)
The article you refer to was evaluating an old version of Tcl (cerca v7.5 beta, I think). Tcl 8.0 solves a number of the speed issues with byte compiling, storing lists as proper lists, etc. Some problems still remain, like the array passing, but I think Tcl deserves some credit.
Of the problems you listed in your post, I believe both binary data and fast math are quite possible. Neither language is yet able to approach optimized C anyway -- why get so hung up on trying?
Those problems come out of the simplicity of Tcl. Perl is a beast in comparison. Well, Perl is a beast even in an objective way. Perl has every feature -- an attribute which isn't a feature.
I'm not Tcl-lover, but inside of its scope Tcl isn't half bad.
Objective C isn't related to C++ at all. Objective C is object-oriented in the style of Smalltalk.
There are no templates because they are not necessary with Objective C. Objective C has a type id which is kind of like a void pointer. So a container object that held ids could hold any kind of object. If it communicates with messages (which are fully polymorphic) then it doesn't need to know what it holds.
This means that all message sends happen dynamically at runtime, which is an overhead. However, these overheads often reflect a complexity in the program that C++ simply isn't able to do any better with. The result is a very flexible system.
Objective C shows its advantages best when you consider the ease of use and power of the libraries. It is also a strict superset of C, so you can use straight C for speed if you want.
That's just a random assortment of thoughts on Objective C, from someone who thinks C++ is a dirty word (so take it as you will).
I think it's about more than RMS's credibility. The FSF requires that they own the copyright to everything they distribute. That's OK as long as you can trust the FSF to use that ownership to do only one thing -- defend the license. As soon as they use the copyright as an asset they damage the credibilty of the FSF and every other piece of software they maintain.
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The marketplace has indirectly caused some things. However, it is still individual people who create ideas. Maybe the marketplace can be a reasonable way to motivate people but it is not a principle that should be used as a foundation. The marketplace is not the foundation for something that should be called "science".
The marketplace has given us no ideas, no beauty, no creation. People have given us those things -- often in disregard of the marketplace which can offer only material rewards.
So, to hell with the marketplace. Even in the most utopian of marketplace ideals, it is dull and dead. Thankfully not everyone has given up on thought and, yes, morallity for the seductive void of the marketplace.
I know I certainly am not tired of moralizing :)
Maybe you were reading something into it that wasn't there, or more likely some moderators looked into it and it got corrected. With the oodles of moderators there now are I expect things like this can get corrected fairly quickly.
(I didn't check non-top-level posts, but moderation/threshold doesn't work terribly well for that anyway)
Of the problems you listed in your post, I believe both binary data and fast math are quite possible. Neither language is yet able to approach optimized C anyway -- why get so hung up on trying?
Those problems come out of the simplicity of Tcl. Perl is a beast in comparison. Well, Perl is a beast even in an objective way. Perl has every feature -- an attribute which isn't a feature.
I'm not Tcl-lover, but inside of its scope Tcl isn't half bad.
Linux need no longer beg for applications. If companies sell these things for Linux, fine. But we certainly don't need to thank them for it.
There are no templates because they are not necessary with Objective C. Objective C has a type id which is kind of like a void pointer. So a container object that held ids could hold any kind of object. If it communicates with messages (which are fully polymorphic) then it doesn't need to know what it holds.
This means that all message sends happen dynamically at runtime, which is an overhead. However, these overheads often reflect a complexity in the program that C++ simply isn't able to do any better with. The result is a very flexible system.
Objective C shows its advantages best when you consider the ease of use and power of the libraries. It is also a strict superset of C, so you can use straight C for speed if you want.
That's just a random assortment of thoughts on Objective C, from someone who thinks C++ is a dirty word (so take it as you will).
MSWLogo is an extension of UCBLogo that includes a lot of more graphical things, but it only works on Windows :(
I also recently saw a bit about a Java version of Logo. You can find more about that at here.
I'd highly encourage teaching Logo to a child. It's a great language, far far better than Basic.
I think it's about more than RMS's credibility.
The FSF requires that they own the copyright
to everything they distribute. That's OK as long
as you can trust the FSF to use that ownership to do only one thing
-- defend the license. As soon as they use the
copyright as an asset they damage the credibilty
of the FSF and every other piece of software they maintain.