Linked by MOS6510 on Thu 10th Jan 2013 23:25 UTC
"For years I've tried my damnedest to get away from C. Too simple, too many details to manage, too old and crufty, too low level. I've had intense and torrid love affairs with Java, C++, and Erlang. I've built things I'm proud of with all of them, and yet each has broken my heart. They've made promises they couldn't keep, created cultures that focus on the wrong things, and made devastating tradeoffs that eventually make you suffer painfully. And I keep crawling back to C."
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 11:29 UTC
The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:33 UTC
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
Linked by David Adams on 05/16/13 4:23 UTC
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/11/13 21:41 UTC
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/08/13 14:22 UTC
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/02/13 15:28 UTC
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/29/13 21:06 UTC
Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/24/13 22:24 UTC
They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/18/13 11:21 UTC
Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.More Features »
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2005-07-12
But after some three and half decades of programming - much of it with C and C syntax languages - C (and most every language based on it) PISSES ME OFF. Needlessly cryptic, pointlessly convoluted, and seemingly intentionally designed to make 100% certain you are going to make coding mistakes, I would rather hand assemble 8k of Z80 machine language, than deal with trying to find a bug in 100 lines of C code.
The ONLY reason I put up with it is that generally speaking it's what you are forced into using by compiler availability, support, and what's expected of you in the workplace. It's easy to blame the lemmings at the rear and front -- since most of us writing software are stuck in the middle and can't see where you're going and can't stop for fear of getting trampled.
I often think C and every language based on its syntax from C++ to Java to PHP, exists for the sole purpose of making programming hard. They are certainly a far cry from the elegance of languages like Pascal or the simplicity of assembly... To be frank, I thought there were two core reasons for higher level languages -- portability - which is a joke when you're still that close to the hardware, and being simpler than machine language - which it most certainly is NOT! It gets far worse when you look at objects in most any C derivative language since they seem to be just shoehorned in any old way!
Even sadder are all these 'newer' languages that are even more needlessly cryptic and difficult to decipher like Python, Ruby, or lord help you Rust... Rust, the language for people who think C is a bit to clean and verbose -- which is akin to saying the Puritans who went to Boston in the 17th century did so because the CoE was a little too warm and fuzzy for their tastes... or founding your own extremist terrorist group because Hezbollah was a bit too warm and fuzzy. There's this noodle-doodle idiotic concept right now that typing a bunch of symbols and abbreviations most people could never remember in a hundred years is 'simpler' than using whole words -- and the quality of code has gone down the toilet thanks to it... Such idiocy explaining why people will piss away bandwidth and code clarity on halfwit rubbish frameworks like jQuery.
It's enough to make you think the old joke... isn't a joke.
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/joke/c.htm
Edited 2013-01-12 23:40 UTC