It's one thing to say "Let's use more CPU because we can."
It's another to say "Let's use more CPU (which is usually relatively idle) in order to improve the normal bottleneck, which is IO."
I don't see what's wrong with that at all. Of course, it's no good if you've got a machine which doesn't represent the "normal" current situation, any more than using a graphics card for "acceleration" makes sense if the graphics card in question is 10 years old but you're using a fast new CPU.
I (and the article, insofar as I can see it) in no way is trying to downplay the sound, trying to say you can throw any odd sound in and make a masterpiece as long as the visuals are good. An appropriate soundtrack is key. But think about this: If you alter the soundtrack, the movie is the same. You alter the visual performance, and the movie isn't the same. (Altering the script will also change the movie, yes, but a script also isn't an essential part. Ever see Fantasia?)
Yes, I've seen Fantasia, and it's great - but that doesn't mean it isn't one of the most essential ingredients in 99% of films. (In fact, I'd say Fantasia had a superb script in a way - some wonderful classical music.
I would rather watch a film with a great script but which had been filmed badly (or watch it on VHS, if you want to talk about resolution etc) than watch a film with a lousy script but great special effects on a hi-def screen. You could take away several of the nicest shots in something like "The Remains of the Day" and it would still be great because of the script. If you made the script average, the film itself would be average.
I'm not sure we even agree in principle, but we've certainly identified the cause of our disagreement. Just because visual performance is what separates film from radio doesn't mean that's what it should be judged on. Consider what separates film from live theatre - special effects, freedom of sets etc. Does that mean films should be judged on how many special effects and how many sets they have? For me, the most powerful films are the ones which remind me most of a live theatre experience.
I think there are various movies which really wouldn't be the same if you altered the soundtrack. Ironically, Fantasia is a great example. It's the way the music and the animation work together which make it great. Try watching it with a different soundtrack (eg some different classical music). I think you'll find it's not the same movie at all. I think it would be interesting to try watching Star Wars without any of the background music - do you really think that wouldn't alter the movie, or the experience of watching it?
(Just as a coincidence, I'm currently watching Channel 4's "The 100 Greatest Family Films". Bits of Jurassic Park are on, and I've just rewound it on the Tivo - not to see the dinosaurs, but to listen to the music.)
Well, nobody is suggesting in the least to have a visual performance alone, neglecting all else.
That's what the article seemed to indicate to me. It said that film was judged on visual performance - it didn't mention judging a film on anything else. This is appropriate for saying that an album isn't judged on its video, but just doesn't work when considering film.
It was clearly relegating sound to a distinct second place, which I don't believe it deserves. The two need to work together. If Citizen Kane had had Loony Tunes as a soundtrack, do you think it would still have been praised as a great film? No. (They may well have said it had great potential, but that that potential was ruined by the soundtrack, but that's a different matter.) The sound needs to be appropriate to the visuals, and vice versa.
For me, however, the story and the script are the most important parts. While I appreciate a lot of the visuals in The West Wing, the script is what makes it superb.
I totally agree with graphics servicing the gameplay but not being the focus - but the comparison with film was a terrible one.
(Me) Yeah, right. Soundtrack doesn't matter? (You) Where do you get that idea. The article at NO point says that the soundtrack doesn't matter. But it does say that a stunning soundtrack won't make your movie great or that a crappy one won't make your movie the crapfest of the year. Yes, a good soundtrack can enhance a movie. A bad soundtrack can detract from a movie. But a soundtrack alone does not make a movie.
No, but "visual performance" alone does not make a movie either, which was what was suggested. Looking stunning without a good script won't make your movie great, and having rubbish special effects won't make your movie awful if your actors and script are great.
And a quote now comes to mind. It's about television, I believe, but the concept holds the same for movies. Unfortunately, I don't know from whose lips it came, but it goes a little something like this: "If a blind man listens to your program and walks away understanding, you have failed. If a deaf man watches your program and walks away understanding, you have succeeded." A movie is ideally measured by visual performance, just like a song is ideally measured by the way it sounds and a game is ideally measured by how well it plays.
I disagree with both your quote and your ideals. Film is a mixture of sound and vision. They shouldn't be treated independently - one should inform the other. Neither should take central place in most films. I usually find that if a film has a great script and great actors, it's going to be great pretty much whatever else happens.
Yes, carefully thought out lighting can be really important (the commentary track on American Beauty is brilliantly revealing for this) and the actual music part of a soundtrack can be really evocative, but to judge a film principally on either of them is a mistake, IMO.
"Do we judge a movie by how good the soundtrack is? Hell no, that doesn't make sense since it's the VISUAL PERFORMANCE that matters."
Yeah, right. Soundtrack doesn't matter? Tell that to anyone who listens to Also Sprach Zarathustra and *immediately* thinks of 2001. What part of "visual performance" includes the dialogue in a film?
Words fail me with just how wrong-headed that view is.
Um, you certainly don't need to give pro-Microsoft answers to become an MVP. I've given plenty of answers berating.NET or Visual Studio in comparison with Java or Eclipse (where appropriate) but have still been awarded as a C# MVP three times.
You're right that it's a participation award, however - it's definitely people who are helpful to the community rather than *necessarily* the brightest stars. You don't necessarily have to be a genius to help a lot of people. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of extremely bright people in the programme though.
No, they're allocated "inline" with the variable (if there's one involved) or on the stack if they're part of an intermediate expression. The mantra of "struct => stack" is one which has confused many people in my experience. See http://www.pobox.com/~skeet/csharp/memory.html for more details. (I'm only picky about this because of the confusion that this has caused.)
For limited-lifetime objects, C# actually has a built-in keyword. It's called using and it works along with the IDisposable interface, regardless of whether your object was allocated on the stack or not.
Calling Dispose doesn't change the lifetime of your object (well, it might suppress finalization). It's to do with releasing resources *other than* the memory taken up by your object itself.
You're comparing performance of an interpreted language vs a native code language
Um, where's the interpreted language involved here?
C# is never interpreted (on.NET itself; I believe there's an interpreter in Mono, but I suspect that's not being used here).
Assuming the Java was using Sun's JDK, it would be JIT-compiled (aside from code which is only run once or twice, which may still be interpreted but would be irrelevant, performance-wise).
No, that wasn't the case. From http://xbox.gamespy.com/articles/500/500452p1.html The Xbox was released in the United States on November 15, 2001. It came out in Japan three months later on February 22, 2002, and then in Europe about a month after that, on March 14, 2002.
I suspect I'd rather have that than having my car stolen - and let's face it, if their security is breached, and the crackers involved can remotely unlock any car they want, I'd expect car theft to go through the roof (or rather, through the open door).
The point is that the original poster is almost certainly wrong - chances are they know very few people who don't use MSN Messenger, but that's not the same as Windows Messenger, which is what the article was talking about.
Last I checked, Google's image tool was named Picasa, not Picasso.
Silly mistakes like this give the impression of a dashed off article after a coffee-break idea, rather than careful consideration which is backed up by a bit of research.
It sounds like you have a lot better luck with "Go to definition" in VS.NET than I do. With the large C# projects I work on, it very rarely works. At home with smaller projects, it seems to be okay - but still less convenient than in Eclipse. (I didn't mention the Declaration view in Eclipse, which shows you the declaration of whatever you've got selected - no need to even navigate there half the time.)
As far Find References, I've just trawled through VS.NET 2003's menus and I think I've found it - is it the "Edit -> Find and Replace -> Find Symbol" option? I'll admit I hadn't seen that before. Thanks for pointing it out. Even though I prefer the way Eclipse does it (finding uses of that particular identifier, rather than any identifier with the same name) it's now not a big enough issue to get on the list, as it were:)
Oh, I forgot to mention something else which VS 2005 really should have pinched from Eclipse - the idea of combining class view and solution explorer. Being able to expand a.java file to see what classes are in there, then expand the classes to see the methods (and refactor against them etc) is very handy - I'd forgotten about it until I started navigating around a project to try to use Find References in VS:)
Out of interest, could you tell me what makes IDEA better than Eclipse? I'd like to know whether or not I should invest some time in giving it another go. There are very things I *notice* I miss in Eclipse, but that's not to say there aren't 101 things I don't know I'm missing:)
You say it's "simply not true" but don't actually give any reasons.
Now, I've never used IDEA for a prolonged period of time - I couldn't get into it, and was happy enough with Eclipse not to worry. (The fact that Eclipse is free helps - it would be difficult to persuade my company to pay for loads of licences for IDEA when Eclipse is perfectly all right and free.)
I do, however, use Visual Studio.NET 2003 and Eclipse in daily work. Here are just a few reasons I much, much prefer Eclipse to VS.NET:
1) Refactoring. Yes, there are tools available to help - but it's free and bundled into Eclipse.
2) Organise imports. Even with VS 2005 having some limited support, it doesn't help nearly as much as it should.
3) Built-in unit testing tools. Using TDD.NET to fire up NUnit GUI (or any of the other things it can do) is much, much uglier than the built-in support for JUnit in Eclipse.
4) Ant support in Eclipse. Our Java build script is *so* much nicer than the nastiness VS.NET encourages. I'm looking forward to investigating the VS 2005 integration with MSbuild.
5) "Hold down ctrl to make anything a hyperlink" - want to go to where a method, variable, class etc is declared? Just hold down ctrl and click. Navigation was never simpler.
6) Search for all references (etc) - in theory there's "go to definition" in VS.NET 2003, but half the time it doesn't work when you're in a large solution, and I don't believe there's any way of finding all references.
7) The VSS plugin for Eclipse is actually better in my view than the VS.NET support... much easier to understand the configuration, change it on a per project basis etc.
8) Launching Tomcat in a debugger with Eclipse (even without any extra plugins) seems a lot more reliable than trying to make sure that IIS has actually caught up with changes. Why do web projects need IIS to be running even to open in VS.NET? It's crazy.
9) Quick Fix and other source options - get Eclipse to write code for you, fix code for you, extract constants, etc. Fantastic stuff - especially in test-first development, where you can write code which uses the API you *want* to exist, then tell Eclipse to create the shell of that API for you.
10) Compile on save with a really good incremental compiler. This saves huge amounts of time. Oh, and changes really do happen, unlike in VS.NET where if you change an embedded resource, a normal build sometimes picks up the change but sometimes doesn't. (Not to mention VS.NET locking access to files it's built quite often, meaning you can't rebuild them without restarting VS.NET - particularly in terms of XML documentation.)
These are not esoteric features which are hardly ever used - although I could list loads of those too, if you want. These are things I use *every day*. My pair programmer and I are *always* saying how much easier our C# work would be if VS.NET supported the features above. Half of them aren't even in VS 2005 beta 2, as far as I can see - or at least aren't as well implemented. Funnily enough, I can't remember the last time we said something similar the other way round...
So, I've given some of my reasons why I think Eclipse isn't just a step ahead of VS.NET, but leaps and bounds. Now, why do you think VS.NET is better than Eclipse, and do you really not care about the above features?
I've always thought that the battles (both real and "play") in Ender's Game would lend themselves brilliantly to computer games - if you could work out a sufficiently immersive UI...
You still seem to be ducking the general issue, to be honest.
I would be very surprised to see an idle 25MHz Amiga compressing any MPEGs faster than an idle 1GHz PC (obviously one with loads of spyware etc would be a different matter).
To bring the topic back to gowen's post, however - that wasn't talking about comparing a 1GHz PC with an Amiga, even. It was disputing the idea that a C64 can do everything a 1GHz PC can do.
Now, that idea seems absolutely preposterous to me - doesn't it seem preposterous to you? You seemed to imply in your first post that gowen was the one who was missing something when he gave examples of things that the C64 couldn't do. (Taking that as the *only* things his PC could do and thus criticising his PC's setup seems very strange, to be honest - any reason why you chose to do so?)
I'm not part of the emulator scene, so don't know for sure, but I suspect there are C64 emulators that would run in faster than C64-real-time on a 1GHz PC, which would cause some interesting issues with xero314's post to start with.
Note that gowen didn't say his 1GHz machine could *only* do that. They were *examples* of things a 2MHz/64K machine wouldn't be able to do.
If you don't think the speed of doing things is any measure of "what it can do", I think we'll have to agree to disagree. For example, a computer which can play full-screen video but only at 1 frame every hundred hours wouldn't really count as playing full-screen video as far as I'm concerned.
1) No, speed was never specified in gowen's post. However, *extent* was specified in my post, which is what I was getting at. If you don't think it's worth doing things faster, that's your call - but be prepared to accept that many people disagree.
2) Again, the base ability to play CD quality music isn't the same *in extent* as the ability to play CD quality music from hard disk - quite possibly while installing something else from a CD, for example.
3) So do you think there are 3D shooters which could reasonably be called "high quality" for the C64, comparing the quality with a PC?
4) You're ducking the issue - would the 25MHz Amiga be able to do it at a comparable speed to the 1GHz PC? Don't forget I'm talking about *extent* here.
5) It also depends on the speed though - don't forget, this was talking about searching very large databases *in seconds* - in other words, speed was explicitly a criterion here.
I suspect that while your Amiga can do all those things, it can't do them to the same extent:
1) Your numerical simulation code is likely to be going a lot slower. 2) Your Amiga wouldn't be housing your entire music collection as MP3s, playing *those* as CD quality music. 3) Your Amiga's "high quality 3D shooters" would look fairly awful compared with the latest games on a recent graphics card with a decent monitor. 4) How long would it take to encode those home videos as MPG? 5) How long does it take to search those databases, and how large can they be?
Of course, that leaves aside the fact that the earlier poster didn't talk about 25MHz - he talked about 2MHz and 64K of memory. None of the above can be done to a useful extent on a C64, no matter how good the programmers are.
Sure, the point that code has become bloated isn't a bad one, but claiming that a C64 can do everything that a 1GHz PC can do doesn't help the discussion at all.
Yes, it *can* be enabled - just as you *can* enable Java to run JNI code from applets. There's nothing to stop viruses or spyware changing the Java plug-in security settings either, is there?
Now, why weren't we meant to compare this "hole" with JNI, precisely?
Both systems allow the execution of unmanaged code if you give them the right permission. Neither system allows execution of unmanaged code when running in a "this is something on the web" context.
The Microsoft keyboard I'm typing at now has a thumb scanner. Admittedly I don't use it, because it won't let me log into domains, but the recognition stuff does seem to work. How security it is is another matter.
I've reviewed various computing books (most before publications, a few afterwards) for publishers. This can be anything from "Should this idea be taken forward and turned into an actual book?" to "Please read this fairly advanced copy and report technical errors."
Sometimes it's actually paid, other times I just get a free copy of the final book (or another book by the same publisher if the book in question doesn't end up being published).
It's not great money, but it's interesting work, and an outlet for my pedantry.
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It's one thing to say "Let's use more CPU because we can."
It's another to say "Let's use more CPU (which is usually relatively idle) in order to improve the normal bottleneck, which is IO."
I don't see what's wrong with that at all. Of course, it's no good if you've got a machine which doesn't represent the "normal" current situation, any more than using a graphics card for "acceleration" makes sense if the graphics card in question is 10 years old but you're using a fast new CPU.
Jon
Or 1GB for less than that from somewhere like EBuyer...
Jon
I (and the article, insofar as I can see it) in no way is trying to downplay the sound, trying to say you can throw any odd sound in and make a masterpiece as long as the visuals are good. An appropriate soundtrack is key. But think about this: If you alter the soundtrack, the movie is the same. You alter the visual performance, and the movie isn't the same. (Altering the script will also change the movie, yes, but a script also isn't an essential part. Ever see Fantasia?)
Yes, I've seen Fantasia, and it's great - but that doesn't mean it isn't one of the most essential ingredients in 99% of films. (In fact, I'd say Fantasia had a superb script in a way - some wonderful classical music.
I would rather watch a film with a great script but which had been filmed badly (or watch it on VHS, if you want to talk about resolution etc) than watch a film with a lousy script but great special effects on a hi-def screen. You could take away several of the nicest shots in something like "The Remains of the Day" and it would still be great because of the script. If you made the script average, the film itself would be average.
I'm not sure we even agree in principle, but we've certainly identified the cause of our disagreement. Just because visual performance is what separates film from radio doesn't mean that's what it should be judged on. Consider what separates film from live theatre - special effects, freedom of sets etc. Does that mean films should be judged on how many special effects and how many sets they have? For me, the most powerful films are the ones which remind me most of a live theatre experience.
I think there are various movies which really wouldn't be the same if you altered the soundtrack. Ironically, Fantasia is a great example. It's the way the music and the animation work together which make it great. Try watching it with a different soundtrack (eg some different classical music). I think you'll find it's not the same movie at all. I think it would be interesting to try watching Star Wars without any of the background music - do you really think that wouldn't alter the movie, or the experience of watching it?
(Just as a coincidence, I'm currently watching Channel 4's "The 100 Greatest Family Films". Bits of Jurassic Park are on, and I've just rewound it on the Tivo - not to see the dinosaurs, but to listen to the music.)
Well, nobody is suggesting in the least to have a visual performance alone, neglecting all else.
That's what the article seemed to indicate to me. It said that film was judged on visual performance - it didn't mention judging a film on anything else. This is appropriate for saying that an album isn't judged on its video, but just doesn't work when considering film.
It was clearly relegating sound to a distinct second place, which I don't believe it deserves. The two need to work together. If Citizen Kane had had Loony Tunes as a soundtrack, do you think it would still have been praised as a great film? No. (They may well have said it had great potential, but that that potential was ruined by the soundtrack, but that's a different matter.) The sound needs to be appropriate to the visuals, and vice versa.
For me, however, the story and the script are the most important parts. While I appreciate a lot of the visuals in The West Wing, the script is what makes it superb.
I totally agree with graphics servicing the gameplay but not being the focus - but the comparison with film was a terrible one.
(Me) Yeah, right. Soundtrack doesn't matter?
(You) Where do you get that idea. The article at NO point says that the soundtrack doesn't matter. But it does say that a stunning soundtrack won't make your movie great or that a crappy one won't make your movie the crapfest of the year. Yes, a good soundtrack can enhance a movie. A bad soundtrack can detract from a movie. But a soundtrack alone does not make a movie.
No, but "visual performance" alone does not make a movie either, which was what was suggested. Looking stunning without a good script won't make your movie great, and having rubbish special effects won't make your movie awful if your actors and script are great.
And a quote now comes to mind. It's about television, I believe, but the concept holds the same for movies. Unfortunately, I don't know from whose lips it came, but it goes a little something like this:
"If a blind man listens to your program and walks away understanding, you have failed. If a deaf man watches your program and walks away understanding, you have succeeded."
A movie is ideally measured by visual performance, just like a song is ideally measured by the way it sounds and a game is ideally measured by how well it plays.
I disagree with both your quote and your ideals. Film is a mixture of sound and vision. They shouldn't be treated independently - one should inform the other. Neither should take central place in most films. I usually find that if a film has a great script and great actors, it's going to be great pretty much whatever else happens.
Yes, carefully thought out lighting can be really important (the commentary track on American Beauty is brilliantly revealing for this) and the actual music part of a soundtrack can be really evocative, but to judge a film principally on either of them is a mistake, IMO.
Hmm. That article was sounding plausible until:
"Do we judge a movie by how good the soundtrack is? Hell no, that doesn't make sense since it's the VISUAL PERFORMANCE that matters."
Yeah, right. Soundtrack doesn't matter? Tell that to anyone who listens to Also Sprach Zarathustra and *immediately* thinks of 2001. What part of "visual performance" includes the dialogue in a film?
Words fail me with just how wrong-headed that view is.
Um, you certainly don't need to give pro-Microsoft answers to become an MVP. I've given plenty of answers berating .NET or Visual Studio in comparison with Java or Eclipse (where appropriate) but have still been awarded as a C# MVP three times.
You're right that it's a participation award, however - it's definitely people who are helpful to the community rather than *necessarily* the brightest stars. You don't necessarily have to be a genius to help a lot of people. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of extremely bright people in the programme though.
I believe the point the parent was trying to make is that eight bits aren't always a byte. (This is why so many standards use "octet stream".)
A byte *typically* (indeed, virtually universally now) consists of eight bits, but there have been architectures with different values.
See http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/byte.html for more information.
In C# structs are allocated on the stack.
No, they're allocated "inline" with the variable (if there's one involved) or on the stack if they're part of an intermediate expression. The mantra of "struct => stack" is one which has confused many people in my experience. See http://www.pobox.com/~skeet/csharp/memory.html for more details. (I'm only picky about this because of the confusion that this has caused.)
For limited-lifetime objects, C# actually has a built-in keyword. It's called using and it works along with the IDisposable interface, regardless of whether your object was allocated on the stack or not.
Calling Dispose doesn't change the lifetime of your object (well, it might suppress finalization). It's to do with releasing resources *other than* the memory taken up by your object itself.
Um, EU=European Union, which seems to quash most of your objection.
And as for why take-up has been lower outside the US - do you really think it has anything to do with the competitions for extension developers?
You're comparing performance of an interpreted language vs a native code language
.NET itself; I believe there's an interpreter in Mono, but I suspect that's not being used here).
Um, where's the interpreted language involved here?
C# is never interpreted (on
Assuming the Java was using Sun's JDK, it would be JIT-compiled (aside from code which is only run once or twice, which may still be interpreted but would be irrelevant, performance-wise).
No, that wasn't the case.l
From http://xbox.gamespy.com/articles/500/500452p1.htm
The Xbox was released in the United States on November 15, 2001. It came out in Japan three months later on February 22, 2002, and then in Europe about a month after that, on March 14, 2002.
I'm not sure that's the worst case.
I suspect I'd rather have that than having my car stolen - and let's face it, if their security is breached, and the crackers involved can remotely unlock any car they want, I'd expect car theft to go through the roof (or rather, through the open door).
The point is that the original poster is almost certainly wrong - chances are they know very few people who don't use MSN Messenger, but that's not the same as Windows Messenger, which is what the article was talking about.
Last I checked, Google's image tool was named Picasa, not Picasso.
Silly mistakes like this give the impression of a dashed off article after a coffee-break idea, rather than careful consideration which is backed up by a bit of research.
It sounds like you have a lot better luck with "Go to definition" in VS.NET than I do. With the large C# projects I work on, it very rarely works. At home with smaller projects, it seems to be okay - but still less convenient than in Eclipse. (I didn't mention the Declaration view in Eclipse, which shows you the declaration of whatever you've got selected - no need to even navigate there half the time.)
:)
.java file to see what classes are in there, then expand the classes to see the methods (and refactor against them etc) is very handy - I'd forgotten about it until I started navigating around a project to try to use Find References in VS :)
As far Find References, I've just trawled through VS.NET 2003's menus and I think I've found it - is it the "Edit -> Find and Replace -> Find Symbol" option? I'll admit I hadn't seen that before. Thanks for pointing it out. Even though I prefer the way Eclipse does it (finding uses of that particular identifier, rather than any identifier with the same name) it's now not a big enough issue to get on the list, as it were
Oh, I forgot to mention something else which VS 2005 really should have pinched from Eclipse - the idea of combining class view and solution explorer. Being able to expand a
Out of interest, could you tell me what makes IDEA better than Eclipse? I'd like to know whether or not I should invest some time in giving it another go. There are very things I *notice* I miss in Eclipse, but that's not to say there aren't 101 things I don't know I'm missing :)
You say it's "simply not true" but don't actually give any reasons.
.NET 2003 and Eclipse in daily work. Here are just a few reasons I much, much prefer Eclipse to VS.NET:
Now, I've never used IDEA for a prolonged period of time - I couldn't get into it, and was happy enough with Eclipse not to worry. (The fact that Eclipse is free helps - it would be difficult to persuade my company to pay for loads of licences for IDEA when Eclipse is perfectly all right and free.)
I do, however, use Visual Studio
1) Refactoring. Yes, there are tools available to help - but it's free and bundled into Eclipse.
2) Organise imports. Even with VS 2005 having some limited support, it doesn't help nearly as much as it should.
3) Built-in unit testing tools. Using TDD.NET to fire up NUnit GUI (or any of the other things it can do) is much, much uglier than the built-in support for JUnit in Eclipse.
4) Ant support in Eclipse. Our Java build script is *so* much nicer than the nastiness VS.NET encourages. I'm looking forward to investigating the VS 2005 integration with MSbuild.
5) "Hold down ctrl to make anything a hyperlink" - want to go to where a method, variable, class etc is declared? Just hold down ctrl and click. Navigation was never simpler.
6) Search for all references (etc) - in theory there's "go to definition" in VS.NET 2003, but half the time it doesn't work when you're in a large solution, and I don't believe there's any way of finding all references.
7) The VSS plugin for Eclipse is actually better in my view than the VS.NET support... much easier to understand the configuration, change it on a per project basis etc.
8) Launching Tomcat in a debugger with Eclipse (even without any extra plugins) seems a lot more reliable than trying to make sure that IIS has actually caught up with changes. Why do web projects need IIS to be running even to open in VS.NET? It's crazy.
9) Quick Fix and other source options - get Eclipse to write code for you, fix code for you, extract constants, etc. Fantastic stuff - especially in test-first development, where you can write code which uses the API you *want* to exist, then tell Eclipse to create the shell of that API for you.
10) Compile on save with a really good incremental compiler. This saves huge amounts of time. Oh, and changes really do happen, unlike in VS.NET where if you change an embedded resource, a normal build sometimes picks up the change but sometimes doesn't. (Not to mention VS.NET locking access to files it's built quite often, meaning you can't rebuild them without restarting VS.NET - particularly in terms of XML documentation.)
These are not esoteric features which are hardly ever used - although I could list loads of those too, if you want. These are things I use *every day*. My pair programmer and I are *always* saying how much easier our C# work would be if VS.NET supported the features above. Half of them aren't even in VS 2005 beta 2, as far as I can see - or at least aren't as well implemented. Funnily enough, I can't remember the last time we said something similar the other way round...
So, I've given some of my reasons why I think Eclipse isn't just a step ahead of VS.NET, but leaps and bounds. Now, why do you think VS.NET is better than Eclipse, and do you really not care about the above features?
I've always thought that the battles (both real and "play") in Ender's Game would lend themselves brilliantly to computer games - if you could work out a sufficiently immersive UI...
You still seem to be ducking the general issue, to be honest.
I would be very surprised to see an idle 25MHz Amiga compressing any MPEGs faster than an idle 1GHz PC (obviously one with loads of spyware etc would be a different matter).
To bring the topic back to gowen's post, however - that wasn't talking about comparing a 1GHz PC with an Amiga, even. It was disputing the idea that a C64 can do everything a 1GHz PC can do.
Now, that idea seems absolutely preposterous to me - doesn't it seem preposterous to you? You seemed to imply in your first post that gowen was the one who was missing something when he gave examples of things that the C64 couldn't do. (Taking that as the *only* things his PC could do and thus criticising his PC's setup seems very strange, to be honest - any reason why you chose to do so?)
I'm not part of the emulator scene, so don't know for sure, but I suspect there are C64 emulators that would run in faster than C64-real-time on a 1GHz PC, which would cause some interesting issues with xero314's post to start with.
In that case, your post wasn't clear at all.
Note that gowen didn't say his 1GHz machine could *only* do that. They were *examples* of things a 2MHz/64K machine wouldn't be able to do.
If you don't think the speed of doing things is any measure of "what it can do", I think we'll have to agree to disagree. For example, a computer which can play full-screen video but only at 1 frame every hundred hours wouldn't really count as playing full-screen video as far as I'm concerned.
1) No, speed was never specified in gowen's post. However, *extent* was specified in my post, which is what I was getting at. If you don't think it's worth doing things faster, that's your call - but be prepared to accept that many people disagree.
2) Again, the base ability to play CD quality music isn't the same *in extent* as the ability to play CD quality music from hard disk - quite possibly while installing something else from a CD, for example.
3) So do you think there are 3D shooters which could reasonably be called "high quality" for the C64, comparing the quality with a PC?
4) You're ducking the issue - would the 25MHz Amiga be able to do it at a comparable speed to the 1GHz PC? Don't forget I'm talking about *extent* here.
5) It also depends on the speed though - don't forget, this was talking about searching very large databases *in seconds* - in other words, speed was explicitly a criterion here.
Jon
I suspect that while your Amiga can do all those things, it can't do them to the same extent:
1) Your numerical simulation code is likely to be going a lot slower.
2) Your Amiga wouldn't be housing your entire music collection as MP3s, playing *those* as CD quality music.
3) Your Amiga's "high quality 3D shooters" would look fairly awful compared with the latest games on a recent graphics card with a decent monitor.
4) How long would it take to encode those home videos as MPG?
5) How long does it take to search those databases, and how large can they be?
Of course, that leaves aside the fact that the earlier poster didn't talk about 25MHz - he talked about 2MHz and 64K of memory. None of the above can be done to a useful extent on a C64, no matter how good the programmers are.
Sure, the point that code has become bloated isn't a bad one, but claiming that a C64 can do everything that a 1GHz PC can do doesn't help the discussion at all.
Yes, it *can* be enabled - just as you *can* enable Java to run JNI code from applets. There's nothing to stop viruses or spyware changing the Java plug-in security settings either, is there?
Now, why weren't we meant to compare this "hole" with JNI, precisely?
Both systems allow the execution of unmanaged code if you give them the right permission. Neither system allows execution of unmanaged code when running in a "this is something on the web" context.
The Microsoft keyboard I'm typing at now has a thumb scanner. Admittedly I don't use it, because it won't let me log into domains, but the recognition stuff does seem to work. How security it is is another matter.
I've reviewed various computing books (most before publications, a few afterwards) for publishers. This can be anything from "Should this idea be taken forward and turned into an actual book?" to "Please read this fairly advanced copy and report technical errors."
Sometimes it's actually paid, other times I just get a free copy of the final book (or another book by the same publisher if the book in question doesn't end up being published).
It's not great money, but it's interesting work, and an outlet for my pedantry.