I went by this theory for a decade or so, but it doesn't work. What you'll get a 10% made up of Christians being motivated by a sham gay rights movement started by the republican party--hell, the dems up at the top will probably be in on it too.
In history we have occasionally combined the two active "Conservative" party and had a new Liberal party appear (that's where the republicans came from). It's time to force the issue again.
Not that it'll matter, If any of us could see the world 20 years from now we wouldn't be able to recognize it anyway.
The garbage sounds nice, but what you really get with NAFTA is corporations being able to open offices in places without human rights controls (Cheaper labor). Saying corporations don't want competition is a complete red herring and has nothing to do with the fact.
What you really get with ILLEGAL immigration is cheap labor in the country, another boon for corporations. Legal immigration on the other hand does nothing for the corporations. What you see bush doing is trying to get people inside the country without labor protections (minimum wage, etc). I'm sure he'd prefer to do it legally, but he is resisting making them "Legal" because that would defeat the point.
Both of these are against human issues and pro corporate issues.
The whole Free Market "Issue" is insane. Give it a few years and you'll grow out of it. You need to understand how the world works in reality, not "Free market theory"
Also, I wasn't upset over both issues, I just think they point out who REALLY runs both parties, corporate interests. This is exactly what must happen in a free market/democracy combination if you don't have enough restraints. In what bizarro world would the larger, richer free-market entities not buy up as much government as they possibly could?
It's also why we want to bring "Democracy" to other countries, we think we can control them better than dictators. We tried dictators for years, but they can be so unpredictable. With a democracy, we can always put in X dollars and get whoever we want elected or removed. We've had so much luck doing so in America.
For that matter, why do people insist on differentating between republicans and democrats at all? It's not like they are controlled by different people.
What's the first thing Clinton did when he got in office? While pretending to deal with gays in the military (Lots of discussion), he quietly used all his might to push NAFTA through.
NAFTA is simply a gimme to corporate interests, it is one of those issues that is completely conservative, anti-democrat.
What does Bush do? Try to make illegal imigration legal and get more mexicans into the country? Conservatives hate this, dems are supposed to be somewhat okay with it, but again, corporate interests love it. If you really wanted to stop immigration, you'd just set up some serious fines or jailtime for employing immigrants. It'll never happen.
Why do they fight so hard for elections if they are the same party? Splitting the republicrat party into two wings and having them battle for control is a great system!
After seeing what Bush can do, the far left-wing doesn't dare vote green, and if fox can keep coming up with reasons to hate clinton, it'll keep the far right-wing away from voting libretarian.
So the infighting actually secures both parties.
My personal solution is, except in presidential positions or positions where there is actually a "Good" republicrat canidate, I always vote for an alternitave independent--even Libretarian (Which I'm kind of against). If you're ultra-conservative and you can vote dem, repub or green--start voting green. Until they actually start winning elections, all you are doing is showing support for the alternative parties.
If you think your vote makes a difference in the presidental election, go ahead and vote republican or dem, but in other elections, stay away from the republicrats!
--------------- Why doesn't slashdot have a spellcheck function?
I'll answer your question because you asked it. You have been very helpful, I think I got a good insight from you and I'm sorry if I frustrated you some, it was not my intention. I won't expect a reply.
The kind of design XP is eliminating is the design where you go down to the method signature level on every single class in the project. - XP with upfront design is not XP, that's the idea, never think ahead, or you are not following the XP method. Your comment on signing every single class in a project is preposterous. Can I ask a personal question? Have you actually worked on a single real life project? If yes, have you ever worked on a single life project where it was a requirement to sign every class?
First of all it's not generally a requirement to design every class, just a good practice if you can pull it off, most can't. Haven't you heard that design should take 60-80% of the development time? What did you think those people were doing? Designing to object/component level? That would take maybe 20% of the time--probably not even that much--it's the first step.
Most of the practice of requiring method (function signature)-level design went out with nasa and the big IBM style projects of the 60's and 70's, those of us who started programming in the 80's saw little of it, those who started in the 90's, probably none at all. As the number of programmers went up, the number of talented architects didn't scale, and your typical programmer 5 years out of college simply cannot do it, most never will be able to. How long do I have to paint before I can create works as good as DaVinci? How much piano practice will get me to the point where I can create a great symphony? Innate talent is a critical part of design (be it buildings, software or art)..
On small projects I have successfully designed around 60% of the classes to the method signature level and almost all of the structure of the new database and data transfer systems for an existing system, but that's only spending two months to design a project that, say 10 people implement in 2 months (Very Small Project) which comes to about 10% of the project being spent on design, not 60% or 80%. Typically we came in before or near my original schedule (doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what the customer wanted or what our sales staff had promised, but was always made available).
If I had spent 60% of the project time up front, I could have gotten closer to, say, 90% of classes designed to method signature level, and I think the whole project would have gone much better.
All the problems we encountered on that particular project were areas that seemed easy enough to me to go without design, so I only designed them at a high level (Object level, or one object representing a group of objects). This caused two problems, one is that they weren't that easy (As you delve in towards the signature level you always discover splits and confusing areas that increase the complexity and I was still learning that), the other is that leaving programmers without guidance is problematic--it needs to be compensated for by a lot of mid-project design discussions and significant refactoring. (When you eliminate the design altogether, it all becomes mid-project design discussions and refactoring)
On a difficult project, to design to that level takes a handful of Good Architects and a small team of designers acting as architects and a HECK of a long time--it's rarely (if ever) done anymore, most shops can't have Good Architects so they make up for it with more agile practices.
I agree with a lot of the stuff you are saying, and I can see your frustration in the way your project went.
The stinky code would get refactored more than necessary, the excellent code would remain mostly untouched. The difference is this: who provides the original code.
I absolutely agree, this is a huge factor with any project. As I understand it, Pair Programming is all about ensuring that an experience programmer is looking over the shoulder of the new programmer helping him, and when you get a pair of inexperienced programmers, an experienced one would come along behind and refactor.
Even an average architect would have predicted that building all of the frameworks in house is detrimental to the project and to the business.
Anyone should be able to see that an XP team cannot "Pick" an architecture (purchased frameworks, etc). That is up to the customer or manager to do before the team even becomes involved. There is nothing in XP that forbids any design, in fact, in kent's book, he says you need to do an appropriate level of design (if I recall correctly), just like you should have an appropriate ammount of comments (That's a pet peve about "XP" code I've worked with).
If an "XP" team pushed you saying you were being more "XP" if you built everything in-house and didn't even look at external tools, than shame on them for using XP as a lever in that way and shame on you for letting them do so against your better judgement. Again, this is my biggest problem with XP--it should not be used as a tool to avoid doing a certian type of work, it's more about ways to re-arrange the work that might be more efficient.
The following quotes of your all indicate that the company you were contracting with was not really understanding XP:
The client was always present during the user stories creation, every user story was confirmed. This client/vendor had an advantage even, because they have gone through the same process a year earlier.
To say the client was present implies the engineers created the user stories. This shouldn't happen.
we switched/rearranged pairs about once every week
This statement shows a team that doesn't know what pairing is about. Pairing shouldn't be continuous and nobody should say "now we Switch", it's more about grabbing someone to help you do a task a couple times a day (which implies that there should generally be resources available that are NOT paired.)
Not that the ammount of time is any big deal, but to have a time where we say "Everybody switch pairs now" means somebody really didn't get it.
there was some flexibility in the schedule from the beginning. All of the user stories were mandatory, but it was possible to shift the release date by about 2 months maximum (by this sacrificing the final SIT time.)
This sounds a lot like a traditional project and nothing like an XP project.
there was almost no late nights, but everyone got the CTS. One person at the computer had to provide the code that two people would generally provide during the day.
You are supposed to switch back and forth every few minutes. This keeps both programmers awake and provides a break. That's the whole point of pair programming! What on earth were you doing, one programms while the other naps in a chair behind him? I'm surprised the entire project didn't crash and burn. Oh, wait...
Actually I believe this is another huge waste. Had the framework architecture been defined before the coding started, the refactoring would have been minimal.
Then why didn't you do so? XP is not a replacement for common sense or the ability to understand your project--and don't let people beat you over the head with the letters "X.P." to force you NOT to do something that you know needs to be done.
I'm sort of neutral about XP still. My take is that almost all the ideas are good, but implementing it in todays business world is virtually impossible.
Most people seem to use parts of XP--often parts that make their lives easier WITHOUT using the parts that compensate.
A few examples of interrelating practices: light (or, some people think no) documenting is possible because of the bullpen/peer programming. Large refactors are simple because of 100% test coverage. 100% test coverage is possible because you test before code. Light (or no) up-front design is possible because you ruthlessly refactor. Don't need comments because the code is fully factored and readable.
Perhaps one day I'll draw a chart of how they all interact, at least for my own edification.
The problem is, most groups leave off a step or two that are uncomfortable... "I won't do any upfront design, but we don't have time to re-write an entire package that needs it." "We don't like to do comments and XP says we don't have to, someday we'll get around to refactoring to make the code readable, but it's dangerous because our incomplete unit tests don't catch everything." And possibly the biggest: "We'll skip the customer requirements a normal project would provide and just use these tiny descriptions on index cards, but we won't have a customer on-site as part of our core team because none are available"
At this point I get really weary when anyone says "We use XP" but follows it up with "We can't do THAT XP practice because..."-without attempting to compensate for the missing practice(s).
I also agree with you that it tends to be a religion amoung some, in many I'm afraid that religion is simply a result of wanting to believe that you don't have to write comments or do any up-front design, but I have to believe that most believe that following XP really will create and enable better programmers that can handle the responsibility XP gives them.
So, my question to the parent would be: do you really think that the XP practices and values were all correctly observed and implemented and that the process failed, or do you think that the implementors may have called themselves XP but actually didn't implement the entire set of practices--which caused it to fail? (I'd really like an answer because I'm still evaluating the practice myself)
Because your contractor claimed to be XP, it doesn't mean their team was using it on that project.
For instance:
The four month deadline that the XP shop agreed to, do you think that was from sales or do you think that, as per xp, all the User Stories were written by the customer, laid out on cards, discussed by the programmers, and had times allocated before the 4 month number was given? This alone would cause the project to fail, even if everything else was 100% XP.
If the original user stories actually tallied to 4 months (by programmers estimates), were a significant portion left as "removable" so that there was some flex in the schedule?
Did you notice programmers activly switching off, constantly re-aranging pairs (each engineer should have at least two different pairs a day) and having nearly constant bullpen discussions?
Was there a customer and a QA representive in the core group--appearing at each stand-up meeting and discussing design issues? Was the QA rep. designing and implementing approval tests from day 1?
Was there complete visibility? Every week the customer should have known EXACTLY how long the remainder of the project would take. Every week the estimate should have gotten more accurate, not less. The customer MUST look at the story cards on the wall every day (at least during the standup meeting) and notice how many are going to be done next week, how many weren't done last week, how many still haven't been moved into the "Active" category,... How could it possibly have gone so wrong with constant feedback and cutting of user stories?
Actually some research I read reciently noticed that if you continue to learn and use your mind throughout your life you remain more child-like and are less likely to grow up.
For the free market to operate "correctly" (allocating money/resources to entities that generate value) its members must have access to good information about products -- their benefits and their costs. In the idealized theory, the market must have perfect information about products.
When the sources of information are so frequently corrupted by established power centers, how is there any home that efficient value-allocation will occur?
For the free market to operate correctly, one must also assume that it's members will act rationally. Most humans don't. They avoid that information even when it's placed in front of them and they often don't act on it even if force-fed the information--(Lots of people still bought Nike's even after it was pointed out that child labor was being used to create them).
In addition, there is WAY too much info on each product for any consumer to take into account.
Conclusion? A truly free market cannot exist, ever, period. We NEED strong controls.
I thought Libertarianism was a great idea when I first heard of it like 20 years ago--most people would; If you observe history, however, you find that it mostly becomes an idolistic theory.
I personally like the principles when applied to individuals, but even then you need limits--We cannot allow most people to come into uncontrolled contact with hate speach because many many people obviously cannot handle it and become a problem for all of us.
When it comes to corporations and free market, the flaws mostly stem from the number of idiots. You can't make a free market when you have more than 50% of your population completely unable to comprehend the information they should be using to make decisions--and we're up to, what, 80% idiots?
I've got the step you missed. The same step all the "Free Marketeers" miss.
4) There is a sucker born every minute--and the sucker to clued ratio is like 80/20, so 80% of the people will disregard 1, 2 and 3 if you put it in front of them with enough adds and a decent price-point.
I'd just assume not is simply a misunderstanding of "I'd just as soon not". "I'd just assume not" means nothing.
At first I thought it could be used as a really bizarre way of saying "I'd rather not assume", but It's always used in the context of "I'd just as soon not", so I can pretty much guarantee it's a simple misunderstanding.
If it were an awkward way to say "I'd rather not assume", you would expect it to be used in cases involving assumptions such as "He could be out with another girl, but I'd just assume not". Instead it's used in cases where assumption has nothing to do with it--"Everyone else is cheating on their wives, but I'd just as soon not!"
This could lead to some serious misunderstanding actually: If you changed that last example add a little "assuming":
"Everyone else may be cheating on their wives, but I'd just ? not!"
That statement COULD read either way, but it would have a different meaning--
?=as soon: I'd rather not cheat on my wife even though I believe it a popular practice.
?=assume: Now we are giving the "Cheaters" the benefit of a doubt--they COULD be cheating on their wives, but I'll assume they aren't (in this case you are saying nothing of your own marriage).
If you search for this phrase, I think you will find it used as in the "as soon" example and never the second (potentially valid but awkward) example leading us to believe that they have just misheard the original phrase spoken in correct context.
Hey, this brings up a second aspect of my original post. What if the existence of the internet is bringing out things that have been festering hidden in family lines for generations.
A mom speaks a phrase she read to her daughter "I'd just as soon", the daughter never took to reading and mishears "I'd just assume", then teaches it to her kids that way. The kids will take it as fact and it will propagate through generations.
If one of the descendants was into reading books, they might learn better and break the chain for their descendants. Then the internet comes around and all these little fractures of the English language come together at once and make some giant language mashup.
There are many times I'd assumed a phrase was something then after reading it in a few books found out I was wrong (song lyrics are notorious for this).
The generations leading up to the internet saw a sharp decline in vocabulary and literacy because people changed reading for TV, so I'm sure this happened a lot.
Your current administration will have no problem fixing this, it's simply a case of outlawing office equipment/minibar keys.
You shouldn't be locking stuff in your desk anyway, what are you a terrorist?
As for minibar keys--it is the view of our administration that you shouldn't be drinking on business in the first place, it's not good for America! Do you really want to help the terrorists win???
We will ensure all minibars are re-keyed with special locks, the keys to which will be restricted to government employees only (Our administration has proven itself to be Above all Laws but God's, and God never said not to drink, so we therefore deserves access)
When minibar keys are outlawed, only outlaws will have minibar keys--then we know who to detain, harass or shoot (our call).
What about an ignorant propogation[sic] of ignorance? I imagine that is the much more likely scenario, rather than the unlikely one: someone researches the proper use of the phrase "begging the question," then continues using it improperly, willfully.
The latter would be an informed propagation of ignorance. Well, no, it's no longer ignorance since the phrase makes much more sense in the newer usage.
Perhaps we could call it an informed, willful attempt to patch a critically broken language. --- On the other hand I have recently come across quite a few truly tragic turns of phrase like "For all intensive purposes.", that one is everywhere--just google for it.
My wife knows someone who says "I'd just assume not" and she's been trying to decide if she should correct him--I thought was a cute fluke, nobody would actually say that! Of course then I start noticing it in other places--last night I saw "I'd just assume not" in the documentation for a linux distro (freespire).
Then there was the training video at prior company where the guy kept saying "Per Se" (or the new written version "Per Say") in the same way most people insert "and" or "Uh" while speaking. "This variable is for regulating the speed per se, this other one is for timing..."
We are now in a world where most text that actually gets read is generated by people without language training of any sort (like myself).
Just give in, trying to correct this exponentially expanding pile of errors we call the internet is just "Tilling at Windmills" (Google it)
Another point that your calculations make clear--it would be AMAZINGLY dangerous. If you bridge the terminals of a AA nimh battery it will get quite hot, in some cases dangerously so.
So if you did the same with something that had the ability to deliver 100x the power, you would probably end up in the hospital (if, for instance, it was in your pocket and the bridge was your keys which has happened to me a couple times).
On the other hand, it would be a great boon for electric cars. The batteries (if really like capacitors) would be infinitely rechargeable and recyclable. It would allow for a much lighter battery mass if you knew you were only going a short distance--you could actually tailor the weight of batteries carried to the distance traveled (which would be nice).
Another advantage--With the advanced energy transfer, it would recharge in a fraction of the time.
And what happened to reading. Kids who read on their own before preschool end up with significantly better vocabularies and tend to be much more articulate--they also have a lot less trouble with schoolwork.
It requires a lot of work on the parents' part to read to the kid every night from the time they are a baby to get them to take to it, but if that's what it takes to have a smart kid, isn't it worth it?
My summary had a suggested solution, but it was edited (Significant improvement overall, thanks eds).
I have been waiting for TV advertisers to come out with something like graphic novels that we can go through frame by frame. The novels could be around 10 seconds instead of 30, spend all the extra money on producing worthwhile content.
At one or two frames of video per page of graphic novel, I'm guessing that you should be able to get hundreds of pages in a 5-10 second spot (30fps * 10=150 or 300 pages). This seems high, anyone know if this is accurate?
The trick is to take ads and intersperse them with the text. You could get a bunch of half-page or full-page ads in with the content, or just have one constant add across the bottom (Preferably with a URL so the non-tivos can go find the same content on the web).
A very primitave version of this is done with Two and a half Men. The producer has created what he calls "Vanity Cards" where he writes what are essentially little blog entry and flashes it on the screen for a fraction of a second.
They are usually pretty interesting, my wife and I always back up, pause and take a minute to read the card. There is an archive of all his vanity cards here: http://www.chucklorre.com/text/
I was just saying that for beginners, VB used to be easier because you couldn't access the generated code and I think your reply agreed with that point.
If one has gone beyond that, they should probably move to another platform. Once you are to the point where you are using control arrays and manually installing event handlers, you should probably move on to a more appropriate language--C# or something.
Honestly I detest the idea of editing generated code, it's just confusing and doesn't scale in any way (hard to maintain, easy to make it so it can't be loaded back into the orignal form editor, incompatible with future releases of the platform and typically they generate horrid code).
I've always wondered why the form designers don't just create the form class with all the controls public (or better yet, a getter to get the controls by name). You can add yourself as a listener to any of the objects and modify the properties without touching the class source code. It would also split the combined view/controller model that those generators always cause (sometimes enforce).
If I HAVE to use a form generator, I'll often use this technique, iterating through the controlls collection of the form looking for a certian name (from another class). The problem is that often the forms don't expose anything publicly, so even this is impossible without modifying the generated code to provide a getter or something.
Or, you could just cut out the middle man and go move to the sun. Oh, wait, the sun is unlivable. Maybe nuclear energy has something to do with that. Perhaps we could set up our nuclear reactors some where millions of miles away and transmit it here through some sort of beam--light or something--or if we looked really hard we could find one out there already just waiting to hand us all it's energy.
Of course, it's harder to make money if there isn't a controlling authority--This is why the government keeps trying to convince us that nuclear is a good idea, lots of people even fall for it. The sun is so communist.
You just described every enegery storage mechanism ever created INCLUDING oil (Oil does not create energy, it simply stores solar energy collected from the sun a while back.).
The act of storing, transporting or using energy in any way involves waste (heat).
Oil & coal happen to be pretty decent storage mechanisms--relatively little waste while in storage, but somewhat difficult to recharge and creating it is quite wasteful.
So, if you are just talking about "Consuming" the energy, hydrogen is much more efficient and clean than oil. If you take into account the production of the energy as well, that's a different story. We'll have to set up some bogs and find some dinasours and wait a while before we can compare.
This isn't really new or unique even to todays graphical MMORPGs.
I used to be on one of the first muds, only available via dialup. The dialup part added to the sense of community since most of us were local. We ended up meeting, having parties, and spent the better part of a decade together on and off.
A few marriages were created and destroyed, children created and destroyed. Really the same kind of thing that happens anywhere where youngish (15-25+ yr old) people unintentially spend a lot of time together.
The military forges similar long-term, deep relaitonships, as does school some office environments and even (to a lesser degree) summer camp.
The trick is spending long ammounts of time with the same group of people.
Having gone through that, I have questions as to how healthy such an environment is. In many cases you have young, under-developed people 13-16 interacting with emotionally immature older people(from 17 to 40!). I'm not sure this combination HAS to be "Bad", but looking back on years of it, I can say that it almost always is.
VB: Used to be a fantastic environment for beginners. It NEVER let you see the generated form code--this is a massive improvement. Generated code should never be edited, just leads to confusion. I haven't checked lately, my guess is MS screwed this up when they moved VB to their workbench, so you're right. VB3 also had the best f1 help I've ever seen, whatever you want, you hit f1 and it always figured out the right context and quickly poped up a help screen for it. Library coverage, controls, keywords--all integrated. This was broken later, don't know if they fixed it again.
There is still a problem--newbies probably shouldn't use Java/C#. I'm not saying they shouldn't be trained in it, but people jumping into Java without having a clue what you are doing (Just because it's a simple looking language) has really given it a bad name because of all the crap apps developed.
For instance, the newb practice of throwing up a quick dialog box that blocks it's thread (the swing thread) makes most people think java GUI's are clunky. They're not, it's just that a lot of apps are written by people who don't understand swing or threading.
C#: good point, I didn't realize it was that portable, but the reason to use Java on such a project is system support for stuff like cross-platform object messaging and trasferring and application servers to reduce active object counts. Also, in the future I'd rather have my code base sitting on an infrastructure who's goal is to make the best system rather than one who's goal is to make the most marketable system.
EVE: Stackless version is like a J2EE applicaiton server. You end up with no data associated with your objects, so you're no longer in an OO system (Well, it depends on how you write your functions, you can use objects within functions...). At any rate, that's great, but they could have gone with an existing, free java appserver and saved them the trouble of writing their own stateless appserver.
That also means that they must have had to create their own redundancy/failover system. Not trivial, but now that they've done it maybe they will release a Python appserver--that's pretty much what happened with java.
PS: How do you get those cool comment bars in the reply?
Should a language need practices like _foo and external utilities to do checking, or does the requirement imply that perhaps the language wasn't developted targetting the kind of work we are doing?
I think Python is neat, but for real work I just don't want a neat language. I want something booring, plain and predictable. I despise C++ in part for operator overloading (also templates and just the uglyness of the whole thing), but don't have a significant problem with C' simplicity on really small projects (Not that I'd choose it).
btw: I realize Java now has templates, and I think that's by far the biggest negative change java has made so far, possibly the ONLY negative change. Writing java classes to support templates requires an entire new, awkward syntax just to support it. Completely counter to everything I like about Java. Checked exceptions are on my hate list as well, but they've been there all along.
The part that interests me the most about Python is probably the neat array manipulation stuff (I forget what they call it--comprehensions?). I'm on the fence about it. On one hand, I think it might make one think differently about how he handles groups of objects which would be fantastic, on the other, now you have another way to do something (as opposed to iterating) that doesn't really gain much.
The shop I work for is very pro-XP so they are really looking for local people. If you have any networking/network management background I know a guy who is staffing up for a big project here and I don't believe he'd mind people working remotely.
I certianly enjoy talking to you, and i'm learning a bit. I think my next step is to go through python again and take notes on what was bothering me about it so much and forward them to you:) I don't remember the specifics so much as coming away from it just feeling that it was the same as the other scripting languages--targetted at quick throw-away code and not really worth enough to spend the extra time on, perhaps you could convince me otherwise.
If you want to pull this off/. or are interested in that position, my email is bill dot kress at gmail.
If you care to come to the middle of nowhere washington/idaho we are looking for some good developers. You obviously know what you're talking about.
Okay, Namespace: I could very well be wrong but I was under the impression that if you assigned a variable then called a method (Perhaps in another package), that variable would be available to the called method. Perhaps I'm confusing python with another language? This is the way that scripting languages act and it scares the crap out of me, explicit interface definitions and repeatability are hugely important.
Object Management: Sounds like you are going through the same stuff that Java users went through that forced 'em to develop the j2ee style servers.
Dynamic typing: How does python deal with errors like this? abc=1 acb=abc+1
In visual basic if I were to see a developer that didn't put Option Explicit at the top of each file, I'd fire him on the spot. Does Python have the same ability, and if so, why is python advertised as dyanamically typed--no developer would ever use dynamic typing unless some way was found around the above example, it's too dangerous.
Scripting Languages: Beanshell turns Java into a scripting language. It still compiles it though. Basic can be compiled or not, C can be interpreted,...
So for my definition of a scripting language I look at, for instance, Java under BSH vs standard Java.
Under beanshell, this would work (iirc) x=5; public addone() {
return x+1; } print addone(); 6
This is neat for quick scripting, but there are a few features that I would be terrified to use in real development: 1) the simplification of System.out.println() to print. It really isn't any harder to type and having multiple ways to do something just means additional confusion.
2) The fact that addone would return 6 for a value of 5, and "5+1" for a value of "5" makes your code extremely unpredictable.
3) Probably most important, the fact that you can access x from the callers namespace. From the class namespace is fine, but from the callers namespace is insane. I may be wrong about Python having the ability to do this. If it can't do this, I apoligize, but I swear that's where I stoped evaluating it and threw it into the toy/scripting category.
Oh, and just having the ability to shut it off doesn't make it a better language (But it makes it a usable language!). Just because VB has "Option Explicit" makes it usable, but it's still terrifying that you could run into code out there where someone didn't turn it on, so all VB code has to be suspect.
Arrays: A lot of code (Perhaps not all) is done in collections/arrays. The question is, is it worth having multiple ways to do something to save a few keystrokes.
My answer is always, don't do anything just to save keystrokes. REPEATED keystrokes are horrible (my bane is the java "JFrame f=new JFrame()" but it never actually cost me any time, it's just a little ugly.), but if you can't type in documentation or can't write a simple for each loop, you are probably in need of a typing class.
If you can think faster than you type, even in the wordiest syntax imaginable (COBOL?), you probably need a typing class.
Chose a syntax for readability not "typeability" because you only type it once, but it will be read much more often.
Just out of curiosity, how did your team make this work. With different development units spread across the state, did you have shared ownership or did each group own their own code? How many people worked on it? How did you communicate primary interfaces? Did you use UML for primary design or some other method, or did you just all code at once and hope things lined up?
How did you manage the namespace thing. That's really one of my biggest questions about large-scale Python development. It's frightening that the namespace outside a method can be passed into that method, so a method may operate differently based on functionality defined outside that class. You can say "We won't use dangerous language features when doing large-scale development", but then why use python?
Did you use unit tests? Is it easy to replicate the entire environment of a class in order to get your tests to work?
What do you use for scaling the server to multiple systems? Did you have to do all that code yourself, or did you have a tool that worked like a J2EE server? For that matter, how do you manage objects on the server, do you re-create them every time the server is called, or do you have a permenant cache to save you all those allocations. Personally I don't love J2EE and if that same functionality is available in python, I'd love to see it.
Any other details would be appreciated, this seems an amazing undertaking. Also, what factors did you weigh when choosing python over java?
Oh, and since you asked, my definition of a scripting language would be any language balanced for writing a minimal ammount of code to get something to work. For instance, in most scripting language a "hello world" is one line. A development language is based on readability and communication with other programmers, Brevity in this kind of a language is not desired, nor are multiple ways of doing something. Consistancy and linguistic simplicity are key (The fewer keywords, options and built-in "tricks", the better).
Slashdot Mirror
I went by this theory for a decade or so, but it doesn't work. What you'll get a 10% made up of Christians being motivated by a sham gay rights movement started by the republican party--hell, the dems up at the top will probably be in on it too.
In history we have occasionally combined the two active "Conservative" party and had a new Liberal party appear (that's where the republicans came from). It's time to force the issue again.
Not that it'll matter, If any of us could see the world 20 years from now we wouldn't be able to recognize it anyway.
The garbage sounds nice, but what you really get with NAFTA is corporations being able to open offices in places without human rights controls (Cheaper labor). Saying corporations don't want competition is a complete red herring and has nothing to do with the fact.
What you really get with ILLEGAL immigration is cheap labor in the country, another boon for corporations. Legal immigration on the other hand does nothing for the corporations. What you see bush doing is trying to get people inside the country without labor protections (minimum wage, etc). I'm sure he'd prefer to do it legally, but he is resisting making them "Legal" because that would defeat the point.
Both of these are against human issues and pro corporate issues.
The whole Free Market "Issue" is insane. Give it a few years and you'll grow out of it. You need to understand how the world works in reality, not "Free market theory"
Also, I wasn't upset over both issues, I just think they point out who REALLY runs both parties, corporate interests. This is exactly what must happen in a free market/democracy combination if you don't have enough restraints. In what bizarro world would the larger, richer free-market entities not buy up as much government as they possibly could?
It's also why we want to bring "Democracy" to other countries, we think we can control them better than dictators. We tried dictators for years, but they can be so unpredictable. With a democracy, we can always put in X dollars and get whoever we want elected or removed. We've had so much luck doing so in America.
For that matter, why do people insist on differentating between republicans and democrats at all? It's not like they are controlled by different people.
What's the first thing Clinton did when he got in office? While pretending to deal with gays in the military (Lots of discussion), he quietly used all his might to push NAFTA through.
NAFTA is simply a gimme to corporate interests, it is one of those issues that is completely conservative, anti-democrat.
What does Bush do? Try to make illegal imigration legal and get more mexicans into the country? Conservatives hate this, dems are supposed to be somewhat okay with it, but again, corporate interests love it. If you really wanted to stop immigration, you'd just set up some serious fines or jailtime for employing immigrants. It'll never happen.
Why do they fight so hard for elections if they are the same party? Splitting the republicrat party into two wings and having them battle for control is a great system!
After seeing what Bush can do, the far left-wing doesn't dare vote green, and if fox can keep coming up with reasons to hate clinton, it'll keep the far right-wing away from voting libretarian.
So the infighting actually secures both parties.
My personal solution is, except in presidential positions or positions where there is actually a "Good" republicrat canidate, I always vote for an alternitave independent--even Libretarian (Which I'm kind of against). If you're ultra-conservative and you can vote dem, repub or green--start voting green. Until they actually start winning elections, all you are doing is showing support for the alternative parties.
If you think your vote makes a difference in the presidental election, go ahead and vote republican or dem, but in other elections, stay away from the republicrats!
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Why doesn't slashdot have a spellcheck function?
First of all it's not generally a requirement to design every class, just a good practice if you can pull it off, most can't. Haven't you heard that design should take 60-80% of the development time? What did you think those people were doing? Designing to object/component level? That would take maybe 20% of the time--probably not even that much--it's the first step.
Most of the practice of requiring method (function signature)-level design went out with nasa and the big IBM style projects of the 60's and 70's, those of us who started programming in the 80's saw little of it, those who started in the 90's, probably none at all. As the number of programmers went up, the number of talented architects didn't scale, and your typical programmer 5 years out of college simply cannot do it, most never will be able to. How long do I have to paint before I can create works as good as DaVinci? How much piano practice will get me to the point where I can create a great symphony? Innate talent is a critical part of design (be it buildings, software or art)..
On small projects I have successfully designed around 60% of the classes to the method signature level and almost all of the structure of the new database and data transfer systems for an existing system, but that's only spending two months to design a project that, say 10 people implement in 2 months (Very Small Project) which comes to about 10% of the project being spent on design, not 60% or 80%. Typically we came in before or near my original schedule (doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what the customer wanted or what our sales staff had promised, but was always made available).
If I had spent 60% of the project time up front, I could have gotten closer to, say, 90% of classes designed to method signature level, and I think the whole project would have gone much better.
All the problems we encountered on that particular project were areas that seemed easy enough to me to go without design, so I only designed them at a high level (Object level, or one object representing a group of objects). This caused two problems, one is that they weren't that easy (As you delve in towards the signature level you always discover splits and confusing areas that increase the complexity and I was still learning that), the other is that leaving programmers without guidance is problematic--it needs to be compensated for by a lot of mid-project design discussions and significant refactoring. (When you eliminate the design altogether, it all becomes mid-project design discussions and refactoring)
On a difficult project, to design to that level takes a handful of Good Architects and a small team of designers acting as architects and a HECK of a long time--it's rarely (if ever) done anymore, most shops can't have Good Architects so they make up for it with more agile practices.
I absolutely agree, this is a huge factor with any project. As I understand it, Pair Programming is all about ensuring that an experience programmer is looking over the shoulder of the new programmer helping him, and when you get a pair of inexperienced programmers, an experienced one would come along behind and refactor.
Anyone should be able to see that an XP team cannot "Pick" an architecture (purchased frameworks, etc). That is up to the customer or manager to do before the team even becomes involved. There is nothing in XP that forbids any design, in fact, in kent's book, he says you need to do an appropriate level of design (if I recall correctly), just like you should have an appropriate ammount of comments (That's a pet peve about "XP" code I've worked with).
If an "XP" team pushed you saying you were being more "XP" if you built everything in-house and didn't even look at external tools, than shame on them for using XP as a lever in that way and shame on you for letting them do so against your better judgement. Again, this is my biggest problem with XP--it should not be used as a tool to avoid doing a certian type of work, it's more about ways to re-arrange the work that might be more efficient.
The following quotes of your all indicate that the company you were contracting with was not really understanding XP:
To say the client was present implies the engineers created the user stories. This shouldn't happen.
This statement shows a team that doesn't know what pairing is about. Pairing shouldn't be continuous and nobody should say "now we Switch", it's more about grabbing someone to help you do a task a couple times a day (which implies that there should generally be resources available that are NOT paired.)
Not that the ammount of time is any big deal, but to have a time where we say "Everybody switch pairs now" means somebody really didn't get it.
This sounds a lot like a traditional project and nothing like an XP project.
You are supposed to switch back and forth every few minutes. This keeps both programmers awake and provides a break. That's the whole point of pair programming! What on earth were you doing, one programms while the other naps in a chair behind him? I'm surprised the entire project didn't crash and burn. Oh, wait...
Then why didn't you do so? XP is not a replacement for common sense or the ability to understand your project--and don't let people beat you over the head with the letters "X.P." to force you NOT to do something that you know needs to be done.
I'm sort of neutral about XP still. My take is that almost all the ideas are good, but implementing it in todays business world is virtually impossible.
... How could it possibly have gone so wrong with constant feedback and cutting of user stories?
Most people seem to use parts of XP--often parts that make their lives easier WITHOUT using the parts that compensate.
A few examples of interrelating practices:
light (or, some people think no) documenting is possible because of the bullpen/peer programming.
Large refactors are simple because of 100% test coverage.
100% test coverage is possible because you test before code.
Light (or no) up-front design is possible because you ruthlessly refactor.
Don't need comments because the code is fully factored and readable.
Perhaps one day I'll draw a chart of how they all interact, at least for my own edification.
The problem is, most groups leave off a step or two that are uncomfortable...
"I won't do any upfront design, but we don't have time to re-write an entire package that needs it."
"We don't like to do comments and XP says we don't have to, someday we'll get around to refactoring to make the code readable, but it's dangerous because our incomplete unit tests don't catch everything."
And possibly the biggest:
"We'll skip the customer requirements a normal project would provide and just use these tiny descriptions on index cards, but we won't have a customer on-site as part of our core team because none are available"
At this point I get really weary when anyone says "We use XP" but follows it up with "We can't do THAT XP practice because..."-without attempting to compensate for the missing practice(s).
I also agree with you that it tends to be a religion amoung some, in many I'm afraid that religion is simply a result of wanting to believe that you don't have to write comments or do any up-front design, but I have to believe that most believe that following XP really will create and enable better programmers that can handle the responsibility XP gives them.
So, my question to the parent would be: do you really think that the XP practices and values were all correctly observed and implemented and that the process failed, or do you think that the implementors may have called themselves XP but actually didn't implement the entire set of practices--which caused it to fail? (I'd really like an answer because I'm still evaluating the practice myself)
Because your contractor claimed to be XP, it doesn't mean their team was using it on that project.
For instance:
The four month deadline that the XP shop agreed to, do you think that was from sales or do you think that, as per xp, all the User Stories were written by the customer, laid out on cards, discussed by the programmers, and had times allocated before the 4 month number was given? This alone would cause the project to fail, even if everything else was 100% XP.
If the original user stories actually tallied to 4 months (by programmers estimates), were a significant portion left as "removable" so that there was some flex in the schedule?
Did you notice programmers activly switching off, constantly re-aranging pairs (each engineer should have at least two different pairs a day) and having nearly constant bullpen discussions?
Was there a customer and a QA representive in the core group--appearing at each stand-up meeting and discussing design issues? Was the QA rep. designing and implementing approval tests from day 1?
Was there complete visibility? Every week the customer should have known EXACTLY how long the remainder of the project would take. Every week the estimate should have gotten more accurate, not less. The customer MUST look at the story cards on the wall every day (at least during the standup meeting) and notice how many are going to be done next week, how many weren't done last week, how many still haven't been moved into the "Active" category,
Is there any point
Actually some research I read reciently noticed that if you continue to learn and use your mind throughout your life you remain more child-like and are less likely to grow up.
Explanes a lot.
For the free market to operate correctly, one must also assume that it's members will act rationally. Most humans don't. They avoid that information even when it's placed in front of them and they often don't act on it even if force-fed the information--(Lots of people still bought Nike's even after it was pointed out that child labor was being used to create them).
In addition, there is WAY too much info on each product for any consumer to take into account.
Conclusion? A truly free market cannot exist, ever, period. We NEED strong controls.
I thought Libertarianism was a great idea when I first heard of it like 20 years ago--most people would; If you observe history, however, you find that it mostly becomes an idolistic theory.
I personally like the principles when applied to individuals, but even then you need limits--We cannot allow most people to come into uncontrolled contact with hate speach because many many people obviously cannot handle it and become a problem for all of us.
When it comes to corporations and free market, the flaws mostly stem from the number of idiots. You can't make a free market when you have more than 50% of your population completely unable to comprehend the information they should be using to make decisions--and we're up to, what, 80% idiots?
I've got the step you missed. The same step all the "Free Marketeers" miss.
4) There is a sucker born every minute--and the sucker to clued ratio is like 80/20, so 80% of the people will disregard 1, 2 and 3 if you put it in front of them with enough adds and a decent price-point.
I'd just assume not is simply a misunderstanding of "I'd just as soon not". "I'd just assume not" means nothing.
At first I thought it could be used as a really bizarre way of saying "I'd rather not assume", but It's always used in the context of "I'd just as soon not", so I can pretty much guarantee it's a simple misunderstanding.
If it were an awkward way to say "I'd rather not assume", you would expect it to be used in cases involving assumptions such as "He could be out with another girl, but I'd just assume not". Instead it's used in cases where assumption has nothing to do with it--"Everyone else is cheating on their wives, but I'd just as soon not!"
This could lead to some serious misunderstanding actually: If you changed that last example add a little "assuming":
"Everyone else may be cheating on their wives, but I'd just ? not!"
That statement COULD read either way, but it would have a different meaning--
?=as soon: I'd rather not cheat on my wife even though I believe it a popular practice.
?=assume: Now we are giving the "Cheaters" the benefit of a doubt--they COULD be cheating on their wives, but I'll assume they aren't (in this case you are saying nothing of your own marriage).
If you search for this phrase, I think you will find it used as in the "as soon" example and never the second (potentially valid but awkward) example leading us to believe that they have just misheard the original phrase spoken in correct context.
Hey, this brings up a second aspect of my original post. What if the existence of the internet is bringing out things that have been festering hidden in family lines for generations.
A mom speaks a phrase she read to her daughter "I'd just as soon", the daughter never took to reading and mishears "I'd just assume", then teaches it to her kids that way. The kids will take it as fact and it will propagate through generations.
If one of the descendants was into reading books, they might learn better and break the chain for their descendants. Then the internet comes around and all these little fractures of the English language come together at once and make some giant language mashup.
There are many times I'd assumed a phrase was something then after reading it in a few books found out I was wrong (song lyrics are notorious for this).
The generations leading up to the internet saw a sharp decline in vocabulary and literacy because people changed reading for TV, so I'm sure this happened a lot.
makes sense.
Your current administration will have no problem fixing this, it's simply a case of outlawing office equipment/minibar keys.
You shouldn't be locking stuff in your desk anyway, what are you a terrorist?
As for minibar keys--it is the view of our administration that you shouldn't be drinking on business in the first place, it's not good for America! Do you really want to help the terrorists win???
We will ensure all minibars are re-keyed with special locks, the keys to which will be restricted to government employees only (Our administration has proven itself to be Above all Laws but God's, and God never said not to drink, so we therefore deserves access)
When minibar keys are outlawed, only outlaws will have minibar keys--then we know who to detain, harass or shoot (our call).
The latter would be an informed propagation of ignorance. Well, no, it's no longer ignorance since the phrase makes much more sense in the newer usage.
Perhaps we could call it an informed, willful attempt to patch a critically broken language.
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On the other hand I have recently come across quite a few truly tragic turns of phrase like "For all intensive purposes.", that one is everywhere--just google for it.
My wife knows someone who says "I'd just assume not" and she's been trying to decide if she should correct him--I thought was a cute fluke, nobody would actually say that! Of course then I start noticing it in other places--last night I saw "I'd just assume not" in the documentation for a linux distro (freespire).
Then there was the training video at prior company where the guy kept saying "Per Se" (or the new written version "Per Say") in the same way most people insert "and" or "Uh" while speaking. "This variable is for regulating the speed per se, this other one is for timing..."
We are now in a world where most text that actually gets read is generated by people without language training of any sort (like myself).
Just give in, trying to correct this exponentially expanding pile of errors we call the internet is just "Tilling at Windmills" (Google it)
Another point that your calculations make clear--it would be AMAZINGLY dangerous. If you bridge the terminals of a AA nimh battery it will get quite hot, in some cases dangerously so.
So if you did the same with something that had the ability to deliver 100x the power, you would probably end up in the hospital (if, for instance, it was in your pocket and the bridge was your keys which has happened to me a couple times).
On the other hand, it would be a great boon for electric cars. The batteries (if really like capacitors) would be infinitely rechargeable and recyclable. It would allow for a much lighter battery mass if you knew you were only going a short distance--you could actually tailor the weight of batteries carried to the distance traveled (which would be nice).
Another advantage--With the advanced energy transfer, it would recharge in a fraction of the time.
And what happened to reading. Kids who read on their own before preschool end up with significantly better vocabularies and tend to be much more articulate--they also have a lot less trouble with schoolwork.
It requires a lot of work on the parents' part to read to the kid every night from the time they are a baby to get them to take to it, but if that's what it takes to have a smart kid, isn't it worth it?
My summary had a suggested solution, but it was edited (Significant improvement overall, thanks eds).
I have been waiting for TV advertisers to come out with something like graphic novels that we can go through frame by frame. The novels could be around 10 seconds instead of 30, spend all the extra money on producing worthwhile content.
At one or two frames of video per page of graphic novel, I'm guessing that you should be able to get hundreds of pages in a 5-10 second spot (30fps * 10=150 or 300 pages). This seems high, anyone know if this is accurate?
The trick is to take ads and intersperse them with the text. You could get a bunch of half-page or full-page ads in with the content, or just have one constant add across the bottom (Preferably with a URL so the non-tivos can go find the same content on the web).
A very primitave version of this is done with Two and a half Men. The producer has created what he calls "Vanity Cards" where he writes what are essentially little blog entry and flashes it on the screen for a fraction of a second.
They are usually pretty interesting, my wife and I always back up, pause and take a minute to read the card. There is an archive of all his vanity cards here: http://www.chucklorre.com/text/
-1? Look at his uname, deserves at least a +1 funny
I was just saying that for beginners, VB used to be easier because you couldn't access the generated code and I think your reply agreed with that point.
If one has gone beyond that, they should probably move to another platform. Once you are to the point where you are using control arrays and manually installing event handlers, you should probably move on to a more appropriate language--C# or something.
Honestly I detest the idea of editing generated code, it's just confusing and doesn't scale in any way (hard to maintain, easy to make it so it can't be loaded back into the orignal form editor, incompatible with future releases of the platform and typically they generate horrid code).
I've always wondered why the form designers don't just create the form class with all the controls public (or better yet, a getter to get the controls by name). You can add yourself as a listener to any of the objects and modify the properties without touching the class source code. It would also split the combined view/controller model that those generators always cause (sometimes enforce).
If I HAVE to use a form generator, I'll often use this technique, iterating through the controlls collection of the form looking for a certian name (from another class). The problem is that often the forms don't expose anything publicly, so even this is impossible without modifying the generated code to provide a getter or something.
Or, you could just cut out the middle man and go move to the sun. Oh, wait, the sun is unlivable. Maybe nuclear energy has something to do with that. Perhaps we could set up our nuclear reactors some where millions of miles away and transmit it here through some sort of beam--light or something--or if we looked really hard we could find one out there already just waiting to hand us all it's energy.
Of course, it's harder to make money if there isn't a controlling authority--This is why the government keeps trying to convince us that nuclear is a good idea, lots of people even fall for it. The sun is so communist.
Can I do this? Sounds like something that I should be able to make a lot of money off, you know with the price of oil and all.
You just described every enegery storage mechanism ever created INCLUDING oil (Oil does not create energy, it simply stores solar energy collected from the sun a while back.).
The act of storing, transporting or using energy in any way involves waste (heat).
Oil & coal happen to be pretty decent storage mechanisms--relatively little waste while in storage, but somewhat difficult to recharge and creating it is quite wasteful.
So, if you are just talking about "Consuming" the energy, hydrogen is much more efficient and clean than oil. If you take into account the production of the energy as well, that's a different story. We'll have to set up some bogs and find some dinasours and wait a while before we can compare.
This isn't really new or unique even to todays graphical MMORPGs.
I used to be on one of the first muds, only available via dialup. The dialup part added to the sense of community since most of us were local. We ended up meeting, having parties, and spent the better part of a decade together on and off.
A few marriages were created and destroyed, children created and destroyed. Really the same kind of thing that happens anywhere where youngish (15-25+ yr old) people unintentially spend a lot of time together.
The military forges similar long-term, deep relaitonships, as does school some office environments and even (to a lesser degree) summer camp.
The trick is spending long ammounts of time with the same group of people.
Having gone through that, I have questions as to how healthy such an environment is. In many cases you have young, under-developed people 13-16 interacting with emotionally immature older people(from 17 to 40!). I'm not sure this combination HAS to be "Bad", but looking back on years of it, I can say that it almost always is.
VB: Used to be a fantastic environment for beginners. It NEVER let you see the generated form code--this is a massive improvement. Generated code should never be edited, just leads to confusion. I haven't checked lately, my guess is MS screwed this up when they moved VB to their workbench, so you're right. VB3 also had the best f1 help I've ever seen, whatever you want, you hit f1 and it always figured out the right context and quickly poped up a help screen for it. Library coverage, controls, keywords--all integrated. This was broken later, don't know if they fixed it again.
There is still a problem--newbies probably shouldn't use Java/C#. I'm not saying they shouldn't be trained in it, but people jumping into Java without having a clue what you are doing (Just because it's a simple looking language) has really given it a bad name because of all the crap apps developed.
For instance, the newb practice of throwing up a quick dialog box that blocks it's thread (the swing thread) makes most people think java GUI's are clunky. They're not, it's just that a lot of apps are written by people who don't understand swing or threading.
C#: good point, I didn't realize it was that portable, but the reason to use Java on such a project is system support for stuff like cross-platform object messaging and trasferring and application servers to reduce active object counts. Also, in the future I'd rather have my code base sitting on an infrastructure who's goal is to make the best system rather than one who's goal is to make the most marketable system.
EVE: Stackless version is like a J2EE applicaiton server. You end up with no data associated with your objects, so you're no longer in an OO system (Well, it depends on how you write your functions, you can use objects within functions...). At any rate, that's great, but they could have gone with an existing, free java appserver and saved them the trouble of writing their own stateless appserver.
That also means that they must have had to create their own redundancy/failover system. Not trivial, but now that they've done it maybe they will release a Python appserver--that's pretty much what happened with java.
PS: How do you get those cool comment bars in the reply?
Should a language need practices like _foo and external utilities to do checking, or does the requirement imply that perhaps the language wasn't developted targetting the kind of work we are doing?
:) I don't remember the specifics so much as coming away from it just feeling that it was the same as the other scripting languages--targetted at quick throw-away code and not really worth enough to spend the extra time on, perhaps you could convince me otherwise.
/. or are interested in that position, my email is bill dot kress at gmail.
I think Python is neat, but for real work I just don't want a neat language. I want something booring, plain and predictable. I despise C++ in part for operator overloading (also templates and just the uglyness of the whole thing), but don't have a significant problem with C' simplicity on really small projects (Not that I'd choose it).
btw: I realize Java now has templates, and I think that's by far the biggest negative change java has made so far, possibly the ONLY negative change. Writing java classes to support templates requires an entire new, awkward syntax just to support it. Completely counter to everything I like about Java. Checked exceptions are on my hate list as well, but they've been there all along.
The part that interests me the most about Python is probably the neat array manipulation stuff (I forget what they call it--comprehensions?). I'm on the fence about it. On one hand, I think it might make one think differently about how he handles groups of objects which would be fantastic, on the other, now you have another way to do something (as opposed to iterating) that doesn't really gain much.
The shop I work for is very pro-XP so they are really looking for local people. If you have any networking/network management background I know a guy who is staffing up for a big project here and I don't believe he'd mind people working remotely.
I certianly enjoy talking to you, and i'm learning a bit. I think my next step is to go through python again and take notes on what was bothering me about it so much and forward them to you
If you want to pull this off
If you care to come to the middle of nowhere washington/idaho we are looking for some good developers. You obviously know what you're talking about.
...
Okay,
Namespace: I could very well be wrong but I was under the impression that if you assigned a variable then called a method (Perhaps in another package), that variable would be available to the called method. Perhaps I'm confusing python with another language? This is the way that scripting languages act and it scares the crap out of me, explicit interface definitions and repeatability are hugely important.
Object Management: Sounds like you are going through the same stuff that Java users went through that forced 'em to develop the j2ee style servers.
Dynamic typing: How does python deal with errors like this?
abc=1
acb=abc+1
In visual basic if I were to see a developer that didn't put Option Explicit at the top of each file, I'd fire him on the spot. Does Python have the same ability, and if so, why is python advertised as dyanamically typed--no developer would ever use dynamic typing unless some way was found around the above example, it's too dangerous.
Scripting Languages:
Beanshell turns Java into a scripting language. It still compiles it though. Basic can be compiled or not, C can be interpreted,
So for my definition of a scripting language I look at, for instance, Java under BSH vs standard Java.
Under beanshell, this would work (iirc)
x=5;
public addone() {
return x+1;
}
print addone();
6
This is neat for quick scripting, but there are a few features that I would be terrified to use in real development:
1) the simplification of System.out.println() to print. It really isn't any harder to type and having multiple ways to do something just means additional confusion.
2) The fact that addone would return 6 for a value of 5, and "5+1" for a value of "5" makes your code extremely unpredictable.
3) Probably most important, the fact that you can access x from the callers namespace. From the class namespace is fine, but from the callers namespace is insane. I may be wrong about Python having the ability to do this. If it can't do this, I apoligize, but I swear that's where I stoped evaluating it and threw it into the toy/scripting category.
Oh, and just having the ability to shut it off doesn't make it a better language (But it makes it a usable language!). Just because VB has "Option Explicit" makes it usable, but it's still terrifying that you could run into code out there where someone didn't turn it on, so all VB code has to be suspect.
Arrays:
A lot of code (Perhaps not all) is done in collections/arrays. The question is, is it worth having multiple ways to do something to save a few keystrokes.
My answer is always, don't do anything just to save keystrokes. REPEATED keystrokes are horrible (my bane is the java "JFrame f=new JFrame()" but it never actually cost me any time, it's just a little ugly.), but if you can't type in documentation or can't write a simple for each loop, you are probably in need of a typing class.
If you can think faster than you type, even in the wordiest syntax imaginable (COBOL?), you probably need a typing class.
Chose a syntax for readability not "typeability" because you only type it once, but it will be read much more often.
Just out of curiosity, how did your team make this work. With different development units spread across the state, did you have shared ownership or did each group own their own code? How many people worked on it? How did you communicate primary interfaces? Did you use UML for primary design or some other method, or did you just all code at once and hope things lined up?
How did you manage the namespace thing. That's really one of my biggest questions about large-scale Python development. It's frightening that the namespace outside a method can be passed into that method, so a method may operate differently based on functionality defined outside that class. You can say "We won't use dangerous language features when doing large-scale development", but then why use python?
Did you use unit tests? Is it easy to replicate the entire environment of a class in order to get your tests to work?
What do you use for scaling the server to multiple systems? Did you have to do all that code yourself, or did you have a tool that worked like a J2EE server? For that matter, how do you manage objects on the server, do you re-create them every time the server is called, or do you have a permenant cache to save you all those allocations. Personally I don't love J2EE and if that same functionality is available in python, I'd love to see it.
Any other details would be appreciated, this seems an amazing undertaking. Also, what factors did you weigh when choosing python over java?
Oh, and since you asked, my definition of a scripting language would be any language balanced for writing a minimal ammount of code to get something to work. For instance, in most scripting language a "hello world" is one line. A development language is based on readability and communication with other programmers, Brevity in this kind of a language is not desired, nor are multiple ways of doing something. Consistancy and linguistic simplicity are key (The fewer keywords, options and built-in "tricks", the better).