Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 13th Aug 2010 22:58 UTC, submitted by Alex Forster
We're far from done with the Oracle v. Google lawsuit. The search giant has responded to the lawsuit, and Miguel De Icaza has provided a very interesting insight into the case. His report has been confirmed by James Gosling, known as the father of Java who left Sun right after the merger. Icaza speculates that the potential to monetise on Java by suing Google was pitched by Jonathan Schwartz during Sun's sales talks with Oracle. Oh boy.
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Member since:2010-02-18
The reason why Java is so widespread is due to massive amounts of money Sun spent on developing/marketing the Java brand.
By now, the reason why Java is so widespread is that it's a relatively safe language to program with a huge amount of libraries available for just about every scenario businesses might need.
That is, Lego for programmers. Just without the fun.
It's not about languages or execution models anymore, but about the availability of components that can be plugged together. Perl survives through CPAN for the same reason.
Where's such a thing for Ada?
RE[2]: Ada is the way to go
by rom508 on Sun 15th Aug 2010 14:28
in reply to "RE: Ada is the way to go"
Member since:2007-04-20
You are just repeating what I wrote in my post. When Java first emerged it was slow and clunky. Sun poured huge amount of time and money, vastly improving Java compiler technology and adding tons of libraries. So much that you have people arguing how Java is faster than C/C++, etc.
Nevertheless, when it comes to safety critical systems, people are using Ada, and not Java real time, or whatever they call it.
Nothing is stopping you from implementing the required libraries in Ada, or any other language. Ada does not have as many libraries/packages as Java, because nobody owns or is trying to sell Ada brand. Businesses jumped on the Java bandwagon because they don't really care about the quality of software, but the quantity. Why is it that there are so many mediocre Java programmers? Because all they know is how to slap together Java's lego bricks. It's much easier to be a bricklayer, than an architect.
I don't claim to be an expert in Java or Ada, but I used them both, and in my opinion Ada is much better designed. When a programming language enforces automatic garbage collection and prevents you from using pointers explicitly, because programmers are too stupid to get it right, it really makes me wonder what type of people prefer using that language.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.More News »
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Member since:
2007-04-20
The reason why Java is so widespread is due to massive amounts of money Sun spent on developing/marketing the Java brand.
From a technical perspective, I personally think Java is too bloated and over-engineered. Java makes sense only to companies like Sun/Oracle that sell expensive hardware to satisfy Java's run-time overheads.
Ada is extensively used in safety-critical systems and is a very modern (compared to good old C) programming language. It is safe, fast and has support for object-oriented programming.
With the recent controversies around Java, I think people should at least give Ada a try. It is difficult not to like Ada, because it's well structured and supported robust software development principles.