Computer Science Canada :: View topic - Throwing in the towel

Computer Science Canada

Throwing in the towel

Author:	wtd [ Fri Apr 01, 2005 2:09 pm ]
Post subject:	Throwing in the towel
After my recent argument with Martin, it's finally beginning to sink in that I'm just too stubborn on computer-related issues. Are x86 chips inelegant when compared to other chip architectures? Maybe, but does it matter? When it's all said and done, no one's even gonna use anything in in significant numbers. The Mac, let's face it, is just irrelevant, as much as I love Apple and the spirit of the people working there. As for programming... well, I've been something of an idealist. I've chosen languages to champion that I thought brought something really important to the table, whether the subject be academic or practical, or even both simultaneously. But who am I kidding? Even with those benefits, it's Microsoft that sets the direction for everyone to follow. Visual Basic and C# are the future, and anyone who denies that is just going to get left behind. The Ruby forums are a nice touch, but ultimately pointless. I guess it's time for me to face reality, go out and get a copy of Windows XP, a book on C# and grow up. I suggest the rest of you do too. You just can't fight it folks, and if you try, you're going to get burned.

Author:	Martin [ Fri Apr 01, 2005 2:28 pm ]
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Wait a second here. Windows XP? C#? Noooo........ (although I thought that you were already playing around with Mono). Of course, for the immediate future at least Microsoft is going to direct the future of computing, but it's not entirely a bad thing. They've shown some innovation in recent times, undoubtedly spurred on by the stiff competition they don't admit they have. Longhorn could be nice. And I clearly am just as stubborn as you when it comes to this issue . Read my edited post in the mac forums :p

Author:	wtd [ Fri Apr 01, 2005 2:30 pm ]
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Yeah. Longhorn's just blurry screenshots so far, but even there it looks so much better than anything else.

Author:	Mazer [ Fri Apr 01, 2005 3:23 pm ]
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Holy crap. Now can you convince tony to change this theme? And don't forget to find a way to port Enlightenment (the mega-ultimate superior WM) to Windows when you get a chance. SPOILER: /me sits back and chuckles, waiting for wtd to say "April Fools!"

Author:	rizzix [ Fri Apr 01, 2005 3:28 pm ]
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oh gosh, WTD? Don't EVER say that. No matter how true it could be. Fight it! We will win... eventually.... hopefully... argh.

Author:	wtd [ Fri Apr 01, 2005 3:33 pm ]
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rizzix wrote: oh gosh, WTD? Don't EVER say that. No matter how true it could be. Fight it! We will win... eventually.... hopefully... argh. It's really idealistic of you to say that rizzic, but really... what are the odds? Apple's not ever going to control things, and eventually, it'll all come to naught, and their followers will be way behind people who've just embraced the inevitable.

Author:	wtd [ Fri Apr 01, 2005 3:34 pm ]
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Coutsos wrote: Holy crap. Now can you convince tony to change this theme? I'll try my best, but it's really hard to make someone see straight when they've had their head in the clouds. Tony's just going to have to see reason, eventually, though.

Author:	Tony [ Fri Apr 01, 2005 4:03 pm ]
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wtd wrote: I'll try my best, but it's really hard to make someone see straight when they've had their head in the clouds. Tony's just going to have to see reason, eventually, though. I'll come down when I hit my head over a solid cloud. Or run out of oxygen, whatever comes first

Author:	shorthair [ Sat Apr 02, 2005 11:46 am ]
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Mac Users Unite. Im into all 3 , Linux Windows and OSX. I Program in Python , VB , Turing and Java. Dont give in WTD , im standing strong.

Author:	Tony [ Sat Apr 02, 2005 1:03 pm ]
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shorthair wrote: Dont give in WTD , im standing strong. wtd wrote: PostPosted: Fri Apr 01, 2005 3:09 pm Post subject: Throwing in the towel

Author:	Naveg [ Sat Apr 02, 2005 6:16 pm ]
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VB and C#?? is it just me or were you the one who said those were as good as dead, and its all about Ruby and C++ now?

Author:	rizzix [ Sat Apr 02, 2005 6:24 pm ]
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What part of april fools day do you guys not understand?

Author:	md [ Sat Apr 02, 2005 6:28 pm ]
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stick with c++, it'll never die (i hope...)

Author:	Hikaru79 [ Sat Apr 02, 2005 6:51 pm ]
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OMG, wtd... now would be a really good time to jump out and go "April Fool's!" . You're scaring me :S

Author:	wtd [ Sat Apr 02, 2005 6:57 pm ]
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Vladimir wrote: VB and C#?? is it just me or were you the one who said those were as good as dead, and its all about Ruby and C++ now? I would qualify that. C++ is a better language than C. It is not, however, by any means the pinnacle of programming language evolution.

Author:	apomb [ Sun Apr 03, 2005 12:47 am ]
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either hes serious or this is the longest (and most disturbing) April fools joke ever

Author:	wtd [ Sun Apr 03, 2005 12:49 am ]
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Well, I was going to say something, but it was too amusing watching people squirm thinking I was serious.

Author:	rizzix [ Sun Apr 03, 2005 12:55 am ]
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aww man you should've waited a year and then... said "april fools"

Author:	apomb [ Sun Apr 03, 2005 1:02 am ]
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wtd: you're pretty brave! you know what such comments can do to the mind of a stubborn programmer ... especially when it comes from such n established geek-type such as yourself! its just not good!

Author:	wtd [ Sun Apr 03, 2005 1:15 am ]
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Brave, evil... whichever.

Author:	Drakain Zeil [ Sun Apr 03, 2005 8:18 am ]
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I predict that java will become the next thing, C# is the apex of M$, after this they're going down hill. That's how I see it anyway.

Author:	Naveg [ Sun Apr 03, 2005 10:40 am ]
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dont tell that to wtd

Author:	Martin [ Sun Apr 03, 2005 11:39 am ]
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I have to say, you had me going at first. God damn my crappy sense of humour. And I predict that C++ will continue to be the "thing" for a long time yet.

Author:	wtd [ Sun Apr 03, 2005 12:00 pm ]
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Drakain Zeil wrote: I predict that java will become the next thing Java was the "next thing" five years ago. Pyhon is the current "next thing." Ruby is the next "next thing."

Author:	rizzix [ Sun Apr 03, 2005 12:44 pm ]
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or so you say... java is still the next big thing.. it is in fact growing... faster than ever.. keep in touch with the www.java.net community.

Author:	Martin [ Sun Apr 03, 2005 1:00 pm ]
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I dunno man...C++ is still the industry standard.

Author:	rizzix [ Sun Apr 03, 2005 1:03 pm ]
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i disagree. c++ is no where to be seen or talked about.. maybe what you have in mind are smal businesses and gaming companies? I know C has a major role in the linux/unix opensource world, but really its NOT C++. In fact how many huge active C++ projects are out there anyways?

Author:	Martin [ Sun Apr 03, 2005 1:35 pm ]
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Practically every game in existence. The vast majority of the programming side of the Canadian government is done in C++ as well. Anything that's not written in C++ is written in C. Proprietary database software for Chrystler is also written in C++. Who uses anything else? EDIT: I'm not saying that C++ is the best language out there. I enjoy using it, but then again, I also enjoy hacking around in assembly every so often too.

Author:	rizzix [ Sun Apr 03, 2005 1:54 pm ]
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Games are not huge C++ projects. Not only that they are not always pure c++, most games run over another previously created Gaming engines: quake, doom3, westwood, unreal, etc. Those engines may be huge, but not most games. C has nothing do do with C++. Both C/C++ may have a large number of legacy projects out there. But the rate of new projects created in any of those languages is nothing in comparison to that of Java. Java's growth rate is more like exponential, specially with the advent of XML. how many software projects does the canadian gov. hold anyways? Global companies dont rely on C++, they move to more dynamic and easier to maintain languages like Java. IBM and a hell a lot of other Global firms have adopt Java as the prefered language of choice for new projects.

Author:	Martin [ Sun Apr 03, 2005 2:05 pm ]
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rizzix wrote: Games are not huge C++ projects. Not only that they are not always pure c++, most games run over another previously created Gaming engines: quake, doom3, westwood, unreal, etc. Those engines may be huge, but not most games. C has nothing do do with C++. Both C/C++ may have a large number of legacy projects out there. But the rate of new projects created in any of those languages is nothing in comparison to that of Java. Java's growth rate is more like exponential, specially with the advent of XML. how many software projects does the canadian gov. hold anyways? Global companies dont rely on C++, they move to more dynamic and easier to maintain languages like Java. IBM and a hell a lot of other Global firms have adopt Java as the prefered language of choice for new projects. What do you mean, C has nothing to do with C++? C++ is a superset of C, with safer io and classes. The government has a lot of software projects that they work on. What big Java projects are there? I don't see how Java is more dynamic than C++.

Author:	rizzix [ Sun Apr 03, 2005 2:38 pm ]
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well in IBM, not sure.. i dont work there. But here's what they have to say: IBM wrote: Why is Java technology important? In a general sense, the main benefits of the Java language are its portability across platforms and operating systems and its ability to be delivered over relatively low-bandwidth channels, such as dial-up communications. The language is also impressively scalable; existing applications can easily be adapted for devices with limited-memory resources. Additionally, because it was designed to run in a secure manner over networks, it affords this level of security when operating over the Internet, as well. In essence, Java technology extends a users computing power from the desktop to the resources of the Web. Java technology is critical to IBM's On Demand Business initiative. Java (as well as Linux) was one of the first technologies to support open standards in the enterprise, opening the door to using XML and Web services to help share information and applications across business lines. Additionally, Java technology serves as the backbone of many IBM products and technical consulting services. Other huge projects include all those of Apache Jakarta: http://jakarta.apache.org/ J2EE is the backbone of many enterprise business including macromedia: their ColdFusion is tightly intergrated with J2EE and thier JRun (java jsp/servlet container) server. Eclipse.org and netbean.org (both which are giants, especially eclipse) are not simply IDE's they are infact what are called Rich Client Platforms. You can use them to develop a client side interface for any type of programs, not necessarily IDE's. Listing the plethora of J2EE projects is knuttz, there are far too many of them. How about some good and intersting projects like: Cloudscape (RDBMS) HSQLDB (RDBMS) Daffodil (RDBMS) JAFS (ftp) Jetty (http/servlet/jsp) and many more... hmm.. then there are those proprietary technologies and products by various companies like Oracle, etc. OpenOffice.org has some integrated technologies that are Java dependent as well.

Author:	wtd [ Sun Apr 03, 2005 2:57 pm ]
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Yes, Java is huge, and it's everywhere. It's not the next big thing, though. People don't get excited about Java. For the most part, they learn it and use it because they can get paid to do do so. Java is the COBOL of our age. Python is where the hype has been for the last few years. Even for companies like IBM, whose bread and butter is Java, Python is more exciting. Increasingly Python is seeing commercial adoption and support. This will inevitably lead to demands for greater stability. Not stability in the sense of crashing, but corporate users will want few changes to Python over the years. This deters hackers and enthusiasts. Ruby is their language, and they're embracing it. The ideas behind Ruby are old. They harken back to Smalltalk and Self, but they wrap it up in a more approachable syntax for those not accustomed to these languages.

Author:	Hikaru79 [ Sun Apr 03, 2005 3:05 pm ]
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Here's me playing for both teams Python: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/03/0715209 Java: Just take a look at freshmeat. I'd say about 70% of the active projects there are in Java.

Author:	the_short1 [ Mon Apr 04, 2005 1:28 pm ]
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dam that was definately awsome!.. . what a great april fools day joke!!! SICK!.. also i must say JAVA is an awsome language.. . i am really enjoying learning it and i just gota start having some time on my hands so i can make a awsome java aplet of our robot "tetra stacking game" . . . ehe but even then its syntax is SOO similiar to C .. its funny . good for me since for our robot we program in C. . so i got some clue as to wahts going on..

Author:	wtd [ Mon Apr 04, 2005 5:56 pm ]
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Hikaru79 wrote: Java: Just take a look at freshmeat. I'd say about 70% of the active projects there are in Java. And a huge number of corporate projects are still in COBOL or FORTRAN, or PL/1 or something equally absurd. The number of projects being coded in a given language doesn't have any relation to its worth. Of course, it's not impossible for a good language o be popular. Heck, if popularity had anything to do with merit, Windows would easily be the best OS.

Author:	rizzix [ Mon Apr 04, 2005 8:27 pm ]
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actually the argument was if java was a popular language, it was not about how much better java is as a language in comparison to others. so i dont see how you came up to such a conculsion.

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