You can see this for yourself. Would you want to write the server side code of a website in assembly? Even writing it in C++ would be miserable.
C++ can be a very good language for web apps. I say this after writing tons of web code in Perl (which I love) over the last 6 years. I'm currently writing back-end code at a large web company. About 40% Perl, 60% C++.
C++ powers more of the web than most slashdotters realize, especially the high-profile web sites.
One of the keys to effective C++ web apps is a class library oriented to text processing. The STL, awesome though it is, is not quite right.
Becoming a good Perl programmer is excellent training for becoming a good C++ programmer. When you have a C++ class library with powers equivalent to libperl, the difference between Perl and C++ is mostly syntax.
As for writing web apps in assembler, I have been tempted - only to prove a point. The hard part, of course, is the library. Write it from scratch? Or wrap libperl?
Because radio and television broadcasting are expensive with limited frequencies available, the wealthy have dominated broadcasting. The Internet and World Wide Web place into the common man's hands the capability of global electronic broadcasting.
Now, are you seriously telling me that the above paragraph uses "wealthy" to describe some middle-class radio station employee, who is indeed "wealthy" compared to a third world peasant? Of course not, because the author contrasts the "wealthy" with the "common man" who now has internet access.
The truth is, commercial radio reflects the "common man" more than the internet does.
Look at the cost of using a foreign ATM...And the bankers laugh all the way to the, uh bank.
In that case, why don't you buy your own ATM? You should be "laughing all the way to the bank" in no time!
Of course, your ATM won't actually work unless you connect it to an EFT network. That could involve both a fixed and per-transaction cost (I have no idea.)
So now your ATM is humming along, knows how to contact banks and process transactions. You should be rich in no time. But there's one problem - no customers. There aren't enough people in your living room who want to use an ATM. You'll need a location, preferrably a high-traffic one. Only problem is, you're competing with lots of other ATM deployers. So you either pay through the nose for a high-traffic location, or get a free location in some bar where the owner hopes the ATM will increase sales.
There is one more step before you can laugh all the way to the bank. Cash. You'll have to contract with an armored transport company to service the ATM.
How many transactons per month would it take just to break even?
Your argument is invalid at the start because it relies on a categorical imperative: if an action is right for one, it is right for all. If a locksmith moves to Littletown, OH because there is no locksmith for 100 miles around, he might do well. If every locksmith in the USA moved to Littletown, they would not do well. The categorical imperative is a bad yardstick for economic decisions.
Secondly, the US has been "losing" jobs to automation, offshoring, and efficiency increases for at least 100 years, and still has low unemployment.
I agree - the laugh tracks are a huge barrier to watching. But a show written around punchlines and laughs is fundamentally different from The Office. Sitcoms with the laffs stripped out would probably appear empty and slow-paced.
The state of commercial FM is pretty poor, but it has little to do with "the wealthy", a phrase that conjures up mustachioed capitalists in top hats. In fact, if more radio stations were owned by genuinely wealthy individuals, they could afford to try something different, instead of slavishly playing formula music.
As usual when we encounter leftist code-speak, there's an ugly truth hidden underneath. In this case, the truth is that radio stations, which are not wealthy but cash-strapped, have to deliver market share. And that the bulk of the population likes bad music and bad Howard Stern imitations.
Hmmm. "The wealthy dominate fast food; that's why we can only get greasy burgers and fries."
In capitalism, most wealth is working hard to generate more wealth; therefore it matters little whether the capital of a radio station came from one millionaire or a thousand pension investments: either way it will probably be used to maximize return, which will create aesthetically unpleasing results.
I got a badly scratched DVD from Netflix. It was unreadable due to disk errors. Their website told me to clean it with Windex, using only radial strokes, never circular. I did this, and the disk became readable. And the scratches seemed diminished. Were they not scratches in the first place? Or did the Windex dissolve something in the coating and reflow it?
Since then I've had to repeat the treatment on heavily scratched DVDs, and it's always worked.
That's 14 years ago. Chances are those publishers have moved to commercial DTP software (AMS excepted). O'Reilly used to use troff with in-house macros; they switched to Word and FrameMaker.
Pullum seems to think that it's OK to use "they" as a genderless substitute for "he" because women can now vote. Since votes for women are not universal, would that lead him to write a sentence like the following?
When the Canadian gets into their car, they switch on the heat; when the Saudi gets into his car, he switches on the air conditioning.
The collapse of the dollar would also strengthen US exports and increase demand for employees. America makes tons of industrial stuff that's less attractive to overseas customers because of the strong dollar.
When I was in a low-paying job, I didn't have a phone or health insurance. A phone is not a necessity. You can use pay phones. And I did need medical attention a few times, but the bills didn't add up to what health insurance costs.
Are the hybrid cars supposed to be examples of frugality? Frugality would mean buying a 10 year old Toyota Tercel and keeping it 5 years.
Contrary to your gloom-and-doom assertions, the job market is doing well. My friends are all working, and we can't find enough qualified programmers. If you want to predict eventual disaster, that's like predicting you'll roll snake eyes - eventually.
I've seen so many predicted disasters that I'm prediction-proof.
Examples: Google gets beat up all the time for tailoring its web searches to suit the Chinese gov't on google.cn. What about Yahoo and MSN?
Agreed. But turn it around - Yahoo got beat up for turning over the identity of a Chinese blogger to the Chinese government. Does anyone seriously think Google or MSN would refuse such a request?
There is often a gap between opinion polls and votes. Politicians are optimized to get the latter.
You seem to prefer a weathervane president, whose policies would fluctuate with each new opinion poll. Is this a genuine preference, or are you merely dismayed that Bush's policies seem wrong by your lights?
The difficulty is in the word "using". I can "use" Linux as a platform for a closed-source application without GPL virality. Why? Because glibc is lgpl'd. However I can't do this with MySQL. Why? It's not because of the licensing status of the server - it's because the client libraries are surprisingly GPL'd, not LGPL'd.
So, I agree that while I don't blame the GPL, its interesting to see developers fall into this trap MySQL has created. Actually, I've only seen them back off from using MySQL, not fall into the trap.
How could you fail to notice the fact that anything using GPL stuff has to be under the GPL?
Not exactly. You can write a closed-source app and distribute it with Linux as one product. Linux stays GPL'd and you are still obliged to provide source code to Linux. The GPL does not "infect" your app just because they were distributed together.
Lying? Read their blog carefully. I don't think they made any promises which could turn out to be lies. Now, your concept of "good" search results may diverge from Google's at some point, but that doesn't make them liars.
I want the behaviour of Python and many other strongly-typed languages: An error.
Just to clarify, you think that C, Javascript and Perl define behaviour in weird and even incorrect ways. Since none of them will return an error in that context.
Pretty much every operator in Perl was added because the language is weakly typed, and a multitude of operators cannot be achieved by proper polymorphism of scalar types, so it is achieved by creating a whole manual of them.
How are you going to replace the quoting operators (q, qq, qw, Leaving that aside, suppose that stronger typing enabled you to demote some operators to class methods. For example, the 'x' operator could be a method, so you write $string2 = $string1->x(50); instead of $string2 = $string1 x 50;. What's the gain? Are you concerned about pollution of the top-level namespace?
+ Defines behaviour in weird and even incorrect ways, or in other words: blissfully ignores undefined behaviours ("Hello world" + 5).
Perl's behavior is neither undefined nor incorrect. It's defined in the man pages - type perldoc perldata. If you think it's "incorrect" for Perl to evaluate the above as 5, which it does, what's your basis for thinking that? And do you want the behavior of C, which returns the address of the ' ' before "world" in a temporary string, or the behavior of javascript, which returns "Hello world5"?
Has hundreds of operators to remember (Part of the reason Perl developers need to walk around with the Perl manual in their pockets..)
Pretty much every operator in Perl that is not present in C was added to meet the needs of seasoned C programmers like Larry Wall. If you don't have powerful quoting operators, you'll have to escape quotes when embedding SQL, Postscript and HTML. If you don't have the binding operator '=~', you have to use more verbose and clumsy function calls to use regexps.
Slashdot Mirror
C++ can be a very good language for web apps. I say this after writing tons of web code in Perl (which I love) over the last 6 years. I'm currently writing back-end code at a large web company. About 40% Perl, 60% C++.
C++ powers more of the web than most slashdotters realize, especially the high-profile web sites.
One of the keys to effective C++ web apps is a class library oriented to text processing. The STL, awesome though it is, is not quite right.
Becoming a good Perl programmer is excellent training for becoming a good C++ programmer. When you have a C++ class library with powers equivalent to libperl, the difference between Perl and C++ is mostly syntax.
As for writing web apps in assembler, I have been tempted - only to prove a point. The hard part, of course, is the library. Write it from scratch? Or wrap libperl?
"It's like any conjuring trick; you always pick the card the magician wants you to pick." --Bernard Wooley in Yes Prime Minister
Now, are you seriously telling me that the above paragraph uses "wealthy" to describe some middle-class radio station employee, who is indeed "wealthy" compared to a third world peasant? Of course not, because the author contrasts the "wealthy" with the "common man" who now has internet access.
The truth is, commercial radio reflects the "common man" more than the internet does.
You are escaping the point. Do you allege that ATM fees are "too high"?
Sympathy? No. Answer one simple question: do you believe running ATM's is wildly profitable?
If you do, you are free to do it yourself. Don't have to be a bank.
In that case, why don't you buy your own ATM? You should be "laughing all the way to the bank" in no time!
Of course, your ATM won't actually work unless you connect it to an EFT network. That could involve both a fixed and per-transaction cost (I have no idea.)
So now your ATM is humming along, knows how to contact banks and process transactions. You should be rich in no time. But there's one problem - no customers. There aren't enough people in your living room who want to use an ATM. You'll need a location, preferrably a high-traffic one. Only problem is, you're competing with lots of other ATM deployers. So you either pay through the nose for a high-traffic location, or get a free location in some bar where the owner hopes the ATM will increase sales.
There is one more step before you can laugh all the way to the bank. Cash. You'll have to contract with an armored transport company to service the ATM.
How many transactons per month would it take just to break even?
Your argument is invalid at the start because it relies on a categorical imperative: if an action is right for one, it is right for all. If a locksmith moves to Littletown, OH because there is no locksmith for 100 miles around, he might do well. If every locksmith in the USA moved to Littletown, they would not do well. The categorical imperative is a bad yardstick for economic decisions.
Secondly, the US has been "losing" jobs to automation, offshoring, and efficiency increases for at least 100 years, and still has low unemployment.
I agree - the laugh tracks are a huge barrier to watching. But a show written around punchlines and laughs is fundamentally different from The Office. Sitcoms with the laffs stripped out would probably appear empty and slow-paced.
The state of commercial FM is pretty poor, but it has little to do with "the wealthy", a phrase that conjures up mustachioed capitalists in top hats. In fact, if more radio stations were owned by genuinely wealthy individuals, they could afford to try something different, instead of slavishly playing formula music.
As usual when we encounter leftist code-speak, there's an ugly truth hidden underneath. In this case, the truth is that radio stations, which are not wealthy but cash-strapped, have to deliver market share. And that the bulk of the population likes bad music and bad Howard Stern imitations.
Hmmm. "The wealthy dominate fast food; that's why we can only get greasy burgers and fries."
In capitalism, most wealth is working hard to generate more wealth; therefore it matters little whether the capital of a radio station came from one millionaire or a thousand pension investments: either way it will probably be used to maximize return, which will create aesthetically unpleasing results.
I got a badly scratched DVD from Netflix. It was unreadable due to disk errors. Their website told me to clean it with Windex, using only radial strokes, never circular. I did this, and the disk became readable. And the scratches seemed diminished. Were they not scratches in the first place? Or did the Windex dissolve something in the coating and reflow it?
Since then I've had to repeat the treatment on heavily scratched DVDs, and it's always worked.
All of which makes it a pleasant place to be.
And all the Valley startups I've seen since the crash have been pretty sensible. Maybe you only hear about the silly ones.
That's 14 years ago. Chances are those publishers have moved to commercial DTP software (AMS excepted). O'Reilly used to use troff with in-house macros; they switched to Word and FrameMaker.
The collapse of the dollar would also strengthen US exports and increase demand for employees. America makes tons of industrial stuff that's less attractive to overseas customers because of the strong dollar.
When I was in a low-paying job, I didn't have a phone or health insurance. A phone is not a necessity. You can use pay phones. And I did need medical attention a few times, but the bills didn't add up to what health insurance costs.
Are the hybrid cars supposed to be examples of frugality? Frugality would mean buying a 10 year old Toyota Tercel and keeping it 5 years.
Contrary to your gloom-and-doom assertions, the job market is doing well. My friends are all working, and we can't find enough qualified programmers. If you want to predict eventual disaster, that's like predicting you'll roll snake eyes - eventually.
I've seen so many predicted disasters that I'm prediction-proof.
A worldwide adventure in a houseboat? Crossing oceans in a houseboat will at least ensure that you don't die of cancer.
Agreed. But turn it around - Yahoo got beat up for turning over the identity of a Chinese blogger to the Chinese government. Does anyone seriously think Google or MSN would refuse such a request?
There is often a gap between opinion polls and votes. Politicians are optimized to get the latter.
You seem to prefer a weathervane president, whose policies would fluctuate with each new opinion poll. Is this a genuine preference, or are you merely dismayed that Bush's policies seem wrong by your lights?
The difficulty is in the word "using". I can "use" Linux as a platform for a closed-source application without GPL virality. Why? Because glibc is lgpl'd. However I can't do this with MySQL. Why? It's not because of the licensing status of the server - it's because the client libraries are surprisingly GPL'd, not LGPL'd.
So, I agree that while I don't blame the GPL, its interesting to see developers fall into this trap MySQL has created. Actually, I've only seen them back off from using MySQL, not fall into the trap.
Not exactly. You can write a closed-source app and distribute it with Linux as one product. Linux stays GPL'd and you are still obliged to provide source code to Linux. The GPL does not "infect" your app just because they were distributed together.
MySQL is different.
Lying? Read their blog carefully. I don't think they made any promises which could turn out to be lies. Now, your concept of "good" search results may diverge from Google's at some point, but that doesn't make them liars.
Plagiarized from here.
How are you going to replace the quoting operators (q, qq, qw, Leaving that aside, suppose that stronger typing enabled you to demote some operators to class methods. For example, the 'x' operator could be a method, so you write $string2 = $string1->x(50); instead of $string2 = $string1 x 50;. What's the gain? Are you concerned about pollution of the top-level namespace?
Perl's behavior is neither undefined nor incorrect. It's defined in the man pages - type perldoc perldata. If you think it's "incorrect" for Perl to evaluate the above as 5, which it does, what's your basis for thinking that? And do you want the behavior of C, which returns the address of the ' ' before "world" in a temporary string, or the behavior of javascript, which returns "Hello world5"?
Pretty much every operator in Perl that is not present in C was added to meet the needs of seasoned C programmers like Larry Wall. If you don't have powerful quoting operators, you'll have to escape quotes when embedding SQL, Postscript and HTML. If you don't have the binding operator '=~', you have to use more verbose and clumsy function calls to use regexps.
The Coast Guard deployed in Iraq, a fact which surprised me.