Arc does not behave like an open-source project
that’s it. for example:
The answer to all this is probably that the project is too young, and all this is still in flux, and it will be clarified when the language becomes more ‘final’. I think it should be the opposite way. Paul Graham should have specified the license from the start. They should also open up the version-control-system they use to develop Arc, and if they don’t use one, they should.
If i got something wrong, please tell me. I’d love to be corrected on these.
p.s: if you’d like to try out a lisp that’s usable currently, there are a lot of them. here are some to start with: mzScheme from the scheme family and SBCL from the common-lisp family. Or, if you would prefer to try out something different, something new, try Clojure. It runs on the JVM, so you also have access to all java libraries.
]]>Arc does not behave like an open-source project
that’s it. for example:
The answer to all this is probably that the project is too young, and all this is still in flux, and it will be clarified when the language becomes more ‘final’. I think it should be the opposite way. Paul Graham should have specified the license from the start. They should also open up the version-control-system they use to develop Arc, and if they don’t use one, they should.
If i got something wrong, please tell me. I’d love to be corrected on these.
p.s: if you’d like to try out a lisp that’s usable currently, there are a lot of them. here are some to start with: mzScheme from the scheme family and SBCL from the common-lisp family. Or, if you would prefer to try out something different, something new, try Clojure. It runs on the JVM, so you also have access to all java libraries.
]]>while both of these services (GitHub, LightHouse) are closed-source, i somehow assumed that they at least ‘understand’ how open-source/free-software works. but then, yesterday i found out that GitHub Terms of Service forbids free-account-users to block ads. hmmm…maybe they should also forbid free-account-users to open Mercurial’s web page in their browser, while GitHub is open in any other window/tab.
]]>while both of these services (GitHub, LightHouse) are closed-source, i somehow assumed that they at least ‘understand’ how open-source/free-software works. but then, yesterday i found out that GitHub Terms of Service forbids free-account-users to block ads. hmmm…maybe they should also forbid free-account-users to open Mercurial’s web page in their browser, while GitHub is open in any other window/tab.
]]>but there is an issue with it seems many do not realize:
the “database” backend of google-app-engine (i will call it BigTable in the following text) is not a relational (read “SQL”) store, and it will never be. for example, it does not support SQL JOINs. but it’s worse than that. because of it’s architecture, JOINS will never be fast there. BigTable is essentially a collection of spreadsheet-tables, where you can do some basic searches, that’s all. oh, and transactions.
for this reason, there probably never will be a BigTable django-ORM wrapper. of course technically it’s possible to implement in python all the missing features, but it’s performance characteristics will not be the same as of a relational-database.
]]>but there is an issue with it seems many do not realize:
the “database” backend of google-app-engine (i will call it BigTable in the following text) is not a relational (read “SQL”) store, and it will never be. for example, it does not support SQL JOINs. but it’s worse than that. because of it’s architecture, JOINS will never be fast there. BigTable is essentially a collection of spreadsheet-tables, where you can do some basic searches, that’s all. oh, and transactions.
for this reason, there probably never will be a BigTable django-ORM wrapper. of course technically it’s possible to implement in python all the missing features, but it’s performance characteristics will not be the same as of a relational-database. so you will not be able to simply take your mysql/postgresql-optimized application, and deploy on it, and all is fine. you will have to restructure your application.
and if you have to restructure your app anyway, why do you need the django-ORM? you can as well write google-app-engine-specific code.
(on the other hand, maybe there could be a more stupid django-orm, that does not assume a relational-db-backend, and it could work with the various non-relational databases like BigTable or hBase or other column-oriented databases…)
the basic idea when writing BigTable code is that read-operations will happen much more often than write-operations. so do more at write-time, and less at read-time. denormalize tables.
for example, take a simple forum-application. it stores discussions. a discussion has comments. now let’s see how we could implement 2 basic features: “add comment” and “list discussion-names with comment-count”.
SQL:
SELECT discussion.name,count(1) from discussion LEFT OUTER JOIN comment GROUP BY comment.discussion_id; (let’s not discuss right now if it’s inner or outer join etc. it’s quite late at night here, so maybe it’s not 100% correct. but it should be enough to demonstrate the situation)BigTable (one possible solution):
select * from discussionof course the whole denormalize-your-database-if-you-want-performance mantra is nothing new. if i remember correctly, Flickr also does this. but still, for most developers, (also for me), it’s just painful to give up our nice, clean, normalized db-tables.
p.s: please note, that all the info is not based on my own performance-benchmarks. it’s more a summary of what i’ve read in the the google-appengine documentation and the google-appengine mailing list.
]]>it’s a review of the No More Heroes video game in an unique, unforgettable way. it’s full of ideas/opinions/experiences… full of content.
for the best review-ending of my life watch the ending starting from 3:20. awesome.
also be sure to watch all the reviews, and subscribe to the RSS feed
]]>it’s a review of the No More Heroes video game in an unique, unforgettable way. it’s full of ideas/opinions/experiences… full of content.
for the best review-ending of my life watch the ending starting from 3:20. awesome.
also be sure to watch all the reviews, and subscribe to the RSS feed
]]>and that was the point where i stopped playing the game (ok, not exactly, i went into one of the three dungeons and then stopped there).
i just cannot help it. for me it seems incredibly boring, that now the story will not move on until i do all 3 dungeons, which will probably involve nothing except going-through-the-dungeon, and fighting-the-boss. three times. i have the feeling that authors usually do this when they are simply out of ideas. now, it might be that actually in Rogue Galaxy, those 3 places (dungeons, whatever) are filled with fantastic story, but i don’t think so :)
the same happened in Neverwinter Nights, except that there you had to collect 4 items (4 stones if i remember correctly). and i hated it there too.
somehow this reminds me of Clichequest
]]>and that was the point where i stopped playing the game (ok, not exactly, i went into one of the three dungeons and then stopped there).
i just cannot help it. for me it seems incredibly boring, that now the story will not move on until i do all 3 dungeons, which will probably involve nothing except going-through-the-dungeon, and fighting-the-boss. three times. i have the feeling that authors usually do this when they are simply out of ideas. now, it might be that actually in Rogue Galaxy, those 3 places (dungeons, whatever) are filled with fantastic story, but i don’t think so :)
the same happened in Neverwinter Nights, except that there you had to collect 4 items (4 stones if i remember correctly). and i hated it there too.
somehow this reminds me of Clichequest
]]>It’s always sad when i have to cut out an entry from my ‘respected authorities’ list, and this time i have to do it with ISO. Now that i think about it, i never really followed whether ISO is a respectable authority or not, but somehow, by default assumed it is. Maybe it never was.
There are several reasons why i don’t like Open Office XML, i will describe here some of them. please note, that i was unable to download the final version, that was accepted by ISO. all i could get was the one accepted by ECMA, and i assume they are similar. if not, please correct me in the comments.
It’s always sad when i have to cut out an entry from my ‘respected authorities’ list, and this time i have to do it with ISO. Now that i think about it, i never really followed whether ISO is a respectable authority or not, but somehow, by default assumed it is. Maybe it never was.
There are several reasons why i don’t like Open Office XML, i will describe here some of them. please note, that i was unable to download the final version, that was accepted by ISO. all i could get was the one accepted by ECMA, and i assume they are similar. if not, please correct me in the comments.
the spec contains attributes like autoSpaceLikeWord95 (section 2.15.3.6), which basically means that you have to do some formatting the same way as Word 95 does it.it is not specified how it should be done. so if someone wants to implement it, he should try it in Word 95? in other words, only the company which has the source code for Word 95 can implement this feature correctly. OOXML proponents will probably point out, that the spec says that this attribute is deprecated and should not be used in new document. this is true. but, on the other hand, why is it in the spec at all? and even if it is deprecated, here is what will happen: Microsoft’s implementation will be able to read/write this correctly, and other implementations will not. and the customer will only see that in Microsoft’s program it works, but in an other program it does not work. that simple.
the spec is very inconsistent. uses different tags/namespaces/attributes for the same thing in different document-types. for example, see how to make the text bold and aligned to right in the various document-types (source):
| Format | Text Color | Text Alignment |
|---|---|---|
| OOXML Text | <w:color w:val=”FF0000”/> | <w:jc w:val=”right”/> |
| OOXML Sheet | <color rgb=”FFFF0000”/> | <alignment horizontal=”right”/> |
| OOXML Presentation | <a:srgbClr val=”FF0000”/> | <a:pPr algn=”r”/> |
| ODF Text | <style:text-properties fo:color=”#FF0000”/> | <style:paragraph-properties fo:text-align=”end” /> |
| ODF Sheet | <style:text-properties fo:color=”#FF0000”/> | <style:paragraph-properties fo:text-align=”end”/> |
| ODF Presentation | <style:text-properties fo:color=”#FF0000”/> | <style:paragraph-properties fo:text-align=”end”/> |
to clarify: i’m not sad because of the file-format. while the format is not perfect, imho it’s still much more open, than their binary-formats. the problem is ISO, not Microsoft. the fact that ISO accepted such a mess as a standard.
to read more, try http://www.noooxml.org/ or just google for OOXML or for autoSpaceLikeWord95.
]]>But what i’d like to talk about here, is their home pages: MySQL and PostgreSQL.
Most of time i work with open-source/free software, and i got used to the way their home pages are created/behave. and let me tell you this: if i would have to choose today between MySQL and PostgreSQL purely based on their home pages, i would never ever choose MySQL. Their web page is just similar to the usual full-of-bullshit commercial-product web pages, which i learned to hate. The only missing thing is the photo of some happy-guy-in-a-suit holding a copy of MySQL.
Or, let’s try a simple test: How fast can you find the download-link for the latest version of MySQL?
i understand the reason for the piece-of-shit web page. MySQL is dual-licensed, there is a commercial version, and there is a company behind it that is trying to sell it. but the problem is that because of this, the “free” version is basically shown as a worse version. and that’s not the best way to look good to programmers using free/open-source software.
]]>But what i’d like to talk about here, is their home pages: MySQL and PostgreSQL.
Most of time i work with open-source/free software, and i got used to the way their home pages are created/behave. and let me tell you this: if i would have to choose today between MySQL and PostgreSQL purely based on their home pages, i would never ever choose MySQL. Their web page is just similar to the usual full-of-bullshit commercial-product web pages, which i learned to hate. The only missing thing is the photo of some happy-guy-in-a-suit holding a copy of MySQL.
Or, let’s try a simple test: How fast can you find the download-link for the latest version of MySQL?
i understand the reason for the piece-of-shit web page. MySQL is dual-licensed, there is a commercial version, and there is a company behind it that is trying to sell it. but the problem is that because of this, the “free” version is basically shown as a worse version. and that’s not the best way to look good to programmers using free/open-source software.
]]>let’s say you want to create a web-app which:
let’s say you want to create a web-app which:
first_num = get_number() second_num = get_number() display(first_num + second_num)
my language of choice is python, so i was curious if it’s possible to achieve something similar in that language. seside uses continuations to achieve this, so i turned to python generators. they allowed me to write this:
def sum_two_numbers(): first_num = yield InputPage("enter first number:") second_num = yield InputPage("enter second number:") sum = int(first_num) + int(second_num) yield TextPage("the sum isresult is: %s" % sum)
the full code is below, but first some notes about it:
the code:
#!/usr/bin/env python2.5 from wsgiref.simple_server import make_server from cgi import parse_qs class TextPage(object): def __init__(self,text): self.text = text def get_response_content(self): return '<html><body>%s</body></html>' % self.text def get_request_data(self,environ): return None class InputPage(TextPage): def get_response_content(self): return """<html><body>%s <form method="get" action="."> <input type="text" name="data" value=""/> </form> </body></html>""" % self.text def get_request_data(self, environ): get_req_dict = parse_qs(environ['QUERY_STRING']) return get_req_dict['data'][0] def sum_two_numbers(): first_num = yield InputPage("enter first number:") second_num = yield InputPage("enter second number:") sum = int(first_num) + int(second_num) yield TextPage("the sum isresult is: %s" % sum) s = sum_two_numbers() cur_item = None def simple_app(environ, start_response): status = '200 OK' response_headers = [('Content-type','text/html')] start_response(status, response_headers) global cur_item if not cur_item: cur_item = s.next() else: cur_item = s.send(cur_item.get_request_data(environ)) return [cur_item.get_response_content()] httpd = make_server('', 8000, simple_app) httpd.serve_forever()
i did a quick google-check about this topic (“python web framework continuations”), and only found Nevow with Wolf, which uses a less-elegant approach, probably because when it was implemented, python2.5 was not yet available. if anyone knows about other python web-frameworks that use generators, leave me a comment.
]]>| python | subversion |
| ruby | subversion |
| gcc | subversion |
| sbcl (lisp) | cvs |
| factor | git |
| ghc (haskell) | darcs |
| openjdk (java) | mercurial |
| lua | no public repo |
| python | subversion |
| ruby | subversion |
| gcc | subversion |
| sbcl (lisp) | cvs |
| factor | git |
| ghc (haskell) | darcs |
| openjdk (java) | mercurial |
| lua | no public repo |
because of a php-upgrade some things got broken, i’m working on fixing it.
]]>because of a php-upgrade some things got broken, i’m working on fixing it.
]]>But apparently not. Last week i’ve read a meta-review (a summary of other reviews) of the game Call of Duty 4 on www.joystiq.com, where the review mentions that
while everyone agreed that the game was short, many saw this a a positive in this busy day and age.
the final drop in the glass was the video-review of Assassin’s Creed on www.gametrailers.com, where they mention (around at 4:10):
… Assassin’s Creed will last you a good 12 to 15 hours depending on your skill level, which is pretty beefy by today’s standards…
(let’s stop for a second. i’m not a native speaker of english. the following of the post depends on the assumption that “beefy” means something positive here. it’s possible that i got this incorrectly, if that’s the case, feel free to correct me in the comments).
so, why is it GOOD that a game only takes 12-15 hours to complete?
i remember playing baldur’s gate 2, and it was a long game. i do not remember anymore how long it took, but various review sites said things like “the story is absolutely epic in length and you can expect several 10’s of hours just to complete the main quest, not to mention the literally hundreds of side-quests.” or “The number I keep hearing from PR people and Bioware/Black Isle designers is 200 hours, but I’ve got a feeling it will be much more than that for your average player.”.
from some of the games i played more recently, Final Fantasy 7 took around 35 hours to complete, and Final Fantasy 12 around 65 hours (and i did do all the optional quests).
yes, there were also shorter games, like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirge_of_Cerberus:_Final_Fantasy_VII] (lately i’m trying to catch up with the not-yet-played Final Fantasy games ..), which took around 15 hours to complete, but i would never say that it’s length was adequate. it’s story was great, but the length was absolutely too short.
i await from a game at least 25-30 hours of gameplay. otherwise how could i enjoy playing it for weeks? otherwise how could it fill my free time, and make me submerged in an other world every evening?
or such things are not needed anymore?
]]>But apparently not. Last week i’ve read a meta-review (a summary of other reviews) of the game Call of Duty 4 on www.joystiq.com, where the review mentions that
while everyone agreed that the game was short, many saw this a a positive in this busy day and age.
the final drop in the glass was the video-review of Assassin’s Creed on www.gametrailers.com, where they mention (around at 4:10):
… Assassin’s Creed will last you a good 12 to 15 hours depending on your skill level, which is pretty beefy by today’s standards…
(let’s stop for a second. i’m not a native speaker of english. the following of the post depends on the assumption that “beefy” means something positive here. it’s possible that i got this incorrectly, if that’s the case, feel free to correct me in the comments).
so, why is it GOOD that a game only takes 12-15 hours to complete?
i remember playing baldur’s gate 2, and it was a long game. i do not remember anymore how long it took, but various review sites said things like “the story is absolutely epic in length and you can expect several 10’s of hours just to complete the main quest, not to mention the literally hundreds of side-quests.” or “The number I keep hearing from PR people and Bioware/Black Isle designers is 200 hours, but I’ve got a feeling it will be much more than that for your average player.”.
from some of the games i played more recently, Final Fantasy 7 took around 35 hours to complete, and Final Fantasy 12 around 65 hours (and i did do all the optional quests).
yes, there were also shorter games, like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirge_of_Cerberus:_Final_Fantasy_VII] (lately i’m trying to catch up with the not-yet-played Final Fantasy games ..), which took around 15 hours to complete, but i would never say that it’s length was adequate. it’s story was great, but the length was absolutely too short.
i await from a game at least 25-30 hours of gameplay. otherwise how could i enjoy playing it for weeks? otherwise how could it fill my free time, and make me submerged in an other world every evening?
or such things are not needed anymore?
]]>i am very interested in distributed version control systems, so i follow the mailing lists of several of them (bzr, git, hg)…
currently my favourite is mercurial btw…
but this post is not about why i chose mercurial.
also not about why distributed version controls are much better than centralised ones (svn, cvs, etc.) (probably will write about this a post at a later point, but not now)
this is about why git is not suitable for me.
intro:
in short, git was created when the kernel developers needed a version control system after the BitKeeper problems, so Linus wrote Git.
it’s a very powerful, and extremely fast version control system. i think, if i would have to decide purely on the features, probably Git would be the winner.
the problem:
but the problem with git is the ..hmmm.. mentality?
it was written (primarily) for the kernel developers originally, and somehow what’s user-friendly for them is not always user-friendly for me.
let’s take a recent example, which i think nicely characterizes the issue:
( the discussion on the git mailing-list )
when you use git, anytime you can do “git diff” which shows you what changed since the last commit, and “git stat” which shows you which files changed since the last commit (this is not an exact definition, but it’s more&less like that).
someone found out, that if he just re-saves a file in the repository without changing it (or in unix-speak: “touch myfile”), then:
so in short, “git diff” behaves differently before “git status” and after “git status”.
when he asked on the mailing list, he was informed that this is not a bug, because for performance reasons “git status” does some things to the repository, which cause that the touched-file does not show up at the second “git diff”.
when he argued that “git status” should be a read-only operation (so that doing it should not affect the behavior of the other commands), he was told that “git status” is not a read-only operation, because in reality it does some internal things in the repository, and also that if this would be read-only, then some things might become slower, etc.
then he argued that while it can be true, that “git status” is not read-only from the implementation point of view, it still should be read-only from the user’s point of view
(for example imagine a simple form of caching of anything.. when you first request some data, they are retrieved, cached and given to you, but when you request it next time, they arrive from the cache. so from the implementation point of view, the retrieval-operation is not read-only, because it writes to the cache, but from the user’s point of view it’s a read-only operation (because to the world outside of the implementation, it behaves as read-only))
but somehow his argument did not get through…
so currently i am not sure if the problem is that:
or
but whichever is the reason, it just proves for me that git is suitable not for me.
]]>i am very interested in distributed version control systems, so i follow the mailing lists of several of them (bzr, git, hg)…
currently my favourite is mercurial btw…
but this post is not about why i chose mercurial.
also not about why distributed version controls are much better than centralised ones (svn, cvs, etc.) (probably will write about this a post at a later point, but not now)
this is about why git is not suitable for me.
intro:
in short, git was created when the kernel developers needed a version control system after the BitKeeper problems, so Linus wrote Git.
it’s a very powerful, and extremely fast version control system. i think, if i would have to decide purely on the features, probably Git would be the winner.
the problem:
but the problem with git is the ..hmmm.. mentality?
it was written (primarily) for the kernel developers originally, and somehow what’s user-friendly for them is not always user-friendly for me.
let’s take a recent example, which i think nicely characterizes the issue:
( the discussion on the git mailing-list )
when you use git, anytime you can do “git diff” which shows you what changed since the last commit, and “git stat” which shows you which files changed since the last commit (this is not an exact definition, but it’s more&less like that).
someone found out, that if he just re-saves a file in the repository without changing it (or in unix-speak: “touch myfile”), then:
so in short, “git diff” behaves differently before “git status” and after “git status”.
when he asked on the mailing list, he was informed that this is not a bug, because for performance reasons “git status” does some things to the repository, which cause that the touched-file does not show up at the second “git diff”.
when he argued that “git status” should be a read-only operation (so that doing it should not affect the behavior of the other commands), he was told that “git status” is not a read-only operation, because in reality it does some internal things in the repository, and also that if this would be read-only, then some things might become slower, etc.
then he argued that while it can be true, that “git status” is not read-only from the implementation point of view, it still should be read-only from the user’s point of view
(for example imagine a simple form of caching of anything.. when you first request some data, they are retrieved, cached and given to you, but when you request it next time, they arrive from the cache. so from the implementation point of view, the retrieval-operation is not read-only, because it writes to the cache, but from the user’s point of view it’s a read-only operation (because to the world outside of the implementation, it behaves as read-only))
but somehow his argument did not get through…
so currently i am not sure if the problem is that:
or
but whichever is the reason, it just proves for me that git is suitable not for me.
]]>the problem is/was that the way to tell SynthHihol to syntax-highlight a given part of the post. you have to put that part between
&lt;pre lang="language-name"&gt; and &lt;/pre&gt; this is quite reasonable, but the problem is that markdown’s &lt;pre&gt; is not customizable, so there’s no way to add a language-attribute to it.
later, when i was searching for an alternative syntax-highlighting plugin for wordpress, i found wp-syntax. unfortunately it had the same problem. but then i asked about my problem on the wordpress-forums, and got an answer .and it works.
while the answer is for wp-syntax, probably the same thing would work also for SyntHihol.
i also switched from SyntHihol to wp-syntax, because it seems to be better maintained.
]]>the problem is/was that the way to tell SynthHihol to syntax-highlight a given part of the post. you have to put that part between
<pre lang="language-name"> and </pre> this is quite reasonable, but the problem is that markdown’s <pre> is not customizable, so there’s no way to add a language-attribute to it.
later, when i was searching for an alternative syntax-highlighting plugin for wordpress, i found wp-syntax. unfortunately it had the same problem. but then i asked about my problem on the wordpress-forums, and got an answer .and it works.
while the answer is for wp-syntax, probably the same thing would work also for SyntHihol.
i also switched from SyntHihol to wp-syntax, because it seems to be better maintained.
]]>i agree with most of his arguments, but the generics one…
]]>i agree with most of his arguments, but the generics one… well…
i wanted to post a comment on his blog, but it kept asking me to login when i wanted to post a comment, and i couldn’t find a way to register, so i am posting my “reply” here:
where he argues about java/c++ generics/templates, he says that the java ones are basically better. while it might be true, that there are certain enhancements in the way java does templates, we must not forget, that there are certain very useful things one can do with templates, but cannot with generics.
example
#include <iostream> #include <string> using namespace std; class Clazz1 { public: string get_hello_message(); }; string Clazz1::get_hello_message() { return string("Clazz1.hello"); } class Clazz2 { public: string get_hello_message(); }; string Clazz2::get_hello_message() { return string("Clazz2.hello"); } template <class T> T say_hello(T obj) { cout < < obj.get_hello_message() << endl; } int main() { Clazz1 c1; Clazz2 c2; say_hello(c1); say_hello(c2); return 0; }
in this C++ program i define 2 classes, both have a method called get_hello_message, but the two classes are not related to each other. then i define a function, that takes an object of any type (and calls it’s get_hello_message method.
try this in java :)
]]>and then i had an idea… this sitemap basically describes all the urls of a site. with this, i could simply check all my urls on the w3 validator. automatically. every night, for example.
but this requires to be able to get some kind of machine-readable output from the w3 validator.
as it turns out, there are 2 ways:
and then i had an idea… this sitemap basically describes all the urls of a site. with this, i could simply check all my urls on the w3 validator. automatically. every night, for example.
but this requires to be able to get some kind of machine-readable output from the w3 validator.
as it turns out, there are 2 ways:
i decided to use the second approach, mostly because it’s simpler.
so i wrote a simple python script, that:
the script turned out to be very simple:
from urllib2 import urlopen from httplib import HTTPConnection from urllib import quote from elementtree import ElementTree from time import sleep SITEMAP_URL = 'http://nekomancer.net/sitemap.xml' VALIDATOR_URL = 'validator.w3.org' LOC_LOCATION = '{http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84}url/{http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84}loc' def get_urls(sitemap_url): c = urlopen(sitemap_url) data = c.read() c.close() tree = ElementTree.fromstring(data) return [loc.text.strip() for loc in tree.findall(LOC_LOCATION)] def get_error_count(url): c = HTTPConnection(VALIDATOR_URL) c.request('HEAD','/check?uri=%s' % quote(url)) r = c.getresponse() c.close() return int(r.getheader('x-w3c-validator-errors')) urls = get_urls(SITEMAP_URL) for url in urls: print get_error_count(url),url sleep(2)
to parse the sitemap.xml i chose to use ElementTree, but i could have used also regular expressions, to match the <loc>URL</loc> parts
i personally think, that a programmer should learn C. it’s used in many areas, so it comes handy on such cases. but there’s no need to learn a lot of it. there’s no need imho to learn how to write complex programs in it. just learn the basic stuff (hello world, fibonacci, read/write files, basic string-manipulation, etc.).
but the arguments proposed in the article seem wrong/incomplete for me. well, some of them are mostly correct, some are half-correct, and some are plain wrong. generally the problem with it is that the author seems to have come from a C/C++/Java/C# world, so he completely ignores the rest (ruby, python, smalltalk, lisp, haskell, ocaml, erlang etc.)
so let’s look at the arguments:
1) C is lower level then other programming languages (C++, Java). Programming at a lower level allows you to further your understanding of computers, as a whole.
this is correct, but if it is so, why don’t you learn assembler? it’s even lower lever than C.
>
2) Device drivers and operating systems are written exclusively in C. Now, you may never write a device driver or an operating system, but what if you are ever required to modify one?
while it’s correct that most of the operating systems are written in C, not all of them (for example, House is an operating system written in haskell).
also, for a programmer there are usually a plenty of new technologies he can learn about, so he should always think about if it pays off or not. and, well, for me, writing op-systems and device drivers does not seem that interesting.
>
3) What if you ever want to get a job programming microcontrollers? They are programmed in C. Are you going to limit your possible list of jobs because you didn’t want to learn a new language?
again, the same as #2. it depends on whether you’d like to program microcontrollers or not.
>
4) C programs are smaller and faster then any other program created in a different language. Sometimes your program needs that speed boost that only C can give it.
not true.
>
5) If you have learned C, you can learn any modern programming language. The reason behind this is that all modern programming languages are based on C (Java, C++, C#, etc).
somehow the author of the article does not realise that using phrases with “all” is very dangerous. did he really check all the obscure, niche programming languages and made sure that they are all based on C?
for example, i’m pretty sure Brainfuck is not. but to come back to “more mainstream” languages, most of the functional ones (like OCaml, Haskell or Lisp do not look like C programs at all (just btw: all 3 of the linked programs were faster in the binaryTree test than the C version :)
>
6) Because C has been around for many years, it has a large community and collective code base. This allows you to quickly and efficiently implement new algorithms or functions that have been programmed before.
ok
>
7) C is the language of the Open Source community. The Open Source poster child, Linux, was coded in C. If you know C, you can participate in and contribute to numerous Open Source communities like Source Forge.
all what he says here is true. but, check this Source Forge statistics:
the most used language on SF is (at least was at the point where it was measued in 2006) Java, followed by C++, followed by C. (and btw. check the “popularity” of C in the graph. see the sinking blue line? :)
in other words: while it’s true, that there are many C projects on SF, there are more java projects there. so if you base your decision purely on SF-popularity, Java is a better choice.
8) C is the only language that teaches you what pointers really are. C# and Java skip the subject completely. It is pointers that give C its power.
true. but using this argument, i could say, that if you don’t use C, you don’t need to have/use/understand it’s power. so why bother with pointers?
for some strange reason, many people think that pointers are the most important concept in programming. there are many other hard (imho much harder than pointers) areas in programming, like concurrency or distributed-programming.
>
9) C is still the most commonly required language for programming jobs. It is well worth your time to get C under your belt.
hmm.. i would like to see the statistics… i also cannot dig up a statistics currently, but if i remember correctly, visual-basic was also quite popular… >
10) Anything that has a microprocessor in it has support for C. From your microwave to your cell phone, C powers technology.
how is this different from #3?
]]>i personally think, that a programmer should learn C. it’s used in many areas, so it comes handy on such cases. but there’s no need to learn a lot of it. there’s no need imho to learn how to write complex programs in it. just learn the basic stuff (hello world, fibonacci, read/write files, basic string-manipulation, etc.).
but the arguments proposed in the article seem wrong/incomplete for me. well, some of them are mostly correct, some are half-correct, and some are plain wrong. generally the problem with it is that the author seems to have come from a C/C++/Java/C# world, so he completely ignores the rest (ruby, python, smalltalk, lisp, haskell, ocaml, erlang etc.)
so let’s look at the arguments:
1) C is lower level then other programming languages (C++, Java). Programming at a lower level allows you to further your understanding of computers, as a whole.
this is correct, but if it is so, why don’t you learn assembler? it’s even lower lever than C.
>
2) Device drivers and operating systems are written exclusively in C. Now, you may never write a device driver or an operating system, but what if you are ever required to modify one?
while it’s correct that most of the operating systems are written in C, not all of them (for example, House is an operating system written in haskell).
also, for a programmer there are usually a plenty of new technologies he can learn about, so he should always think about if it pays off or not. and, well, for me, writing op-systems and device drivers does not seem that interesting.
>
3) What if you ever want to get a job programming microcontrollers? They are programmed in C. Are you going to limit your possible list of jobs because you didn’t want to learn a new language?
again, the same as #2. it depends on whether you’d like to program microcontrollers or not.
>
4) C programs are smaller and faster then any other program created in a different language. Sometimes your program needs that speed boost that only C can give it.
not true.
>
5) If you have learned C, you can learn any modern programming language. The reason behind this is that all modern programming languages are based on C (Java, C++, C#, etc).
somehow the author of the article does not realise that using phrases with “all” is very dangerous. did he really check all the obscure, niche programming languages and made sure that they are all based on C?
for example, i’m pretty sure Brainfuck is not. but to come back to “more mainstream” languages, most of the functional ones (like OCaml, Haskell or Lisp do not look like C programs at all (just btw: all 3 of the linked programs were faster in the binaryTree test than the C version :)
>
6) Because C has been around for many years, it has a large community and collective code base. This allows you to quickly and efficiently implement new algorithms or functions that have been programmed before.
ok
>
7) C is the language of the Open Source community. The Open Source poster child, Linux, was coded in C. If you know C, you can participate in and contribute to numerous Open Source communities like Source Forge.
all what he says here is true. but, check this Source Forge statistics:
the most used language on SF is (at least was at the point where it was measued in 2006) Java, followed by C++, followed by C. (and btw. check the “popularity” of C in the graph. see the sinking blue line? :)
in other words: while it’s true, that there are many C projects on SF, there are more java projects there. so if you base your decision purely on SF-popularity, Java is a better choice.
8) C is the only language that teaches you what pointers really are. C# and Java skip the subject completely. It is pointers that give C its power.
true. but using this argument, i could say, that if you don’t use C, you don’t need to have/use/understand it’s power. so why bother with pointers?
for some strange reason, many people think that pointers are the most important concept in programming. there are many other hard (imho much harder than pointers) areas in programming, like concurrency or distributed-programming.
>
9) C is still the most commonly required language for programming jobs. It is well worth your time to get C under your belt.
hmm.. i would like to see the statistics… i also cannot dig up a statistics currently, but if i remember correctly, visual-basic was also quite popular… >
10) Anything that has a microprocessor in it has support for C. From your microwave to your cell phone, C powers technology.
how is this different from #3?
]]>
let me present you java, the programming language:
enjoy.
ps1: to be fair, there are still some (hopefully temporary) blurry parts. but the rest is simple. i do not develop in java anymore (switched to python), but i can only admire the elegance of how SUN managed to open-source java. no tricky licenses, no obscure ways to get the code. i’m sure for the visual-C++ developing slaves of the microsoft world this seems alien and discomforting. but for the rest of us, it’s a piece of elegance.
]]>let me present you java, the programming language:
enjoy.
ps1: to be fair, there are still some (hopefully temporary) blurry parts. but the rest is simple. i do not develop in java anymore (switched to python), but i can only admire the elegance of how SUN managed to open-source java. no tricky licenses, no obscure ways to get the code. i’m sure for the visual-C++ developing slaves of the microsoft world this seems alien and discomforting. but for the rest of us, it’s a piece of elegance.
]]>and ..hmmm…, now i’m back :)
why? it’s hard to say… first thing is… you have to understand, is that this whole domain-moving is more like playing/experimenting… because currently i am not using any extra features…so all the argumens pro/contra the hosting-change are in the “what if” category.
so, i’m back to my old hosting for now. it does not mean i close my dreamhost account.. it’s still valid for some months… so ..who knows :)
]]>and ..hmmm…, now i’m back :)
why? it’s hard to say… first thing is… you have to understand, is that this whole domain-moving is more like playing/experimenting… because currently i am not using any extra features…so all the argumens pro/contra the hosting-change are in the “what if” category.
so, i’m back to my old hosting for now. it does not mean i close my dreamhost account.. it’s still valid for some months… so ..who knows :)
]]>but somehow i cannot see how it could help me currently. don’t get me wrong, i understand it’s benefits (making the web machine-readable). but i don’t see any PRACTICAL applications of this technology currently. nevertheless, i’m always willing to try out new toys in this field.
today i’ve read a blog post about using semantic-web-stuff on your blog. so i immediately decided to try it out.
there was a wordpress plugin recommended, which i installed.
the plugin simply generates some machine-readable about your blog posts in SIOC format.
additionally, after you have set it up, and so you have SIOC data available about your blog, you can notify about your blog posts the Ping the Semantic Web service, which seems to be a semantic-data indexing/searching system. (this notification can happen automatically by wordpress, if you decide so).
on the Ping the Semantic Web site, they list the recently updated RDF documents.
and what did i find there? http://galleries.penthouse.com/labels.rdf :)
yes, a link to an RDF document at Penthouse’s website. i must admit, i was surprised. what do they have to do with RDF? so i went to http://galleries.penthouse.com, which redirected me to http://www.penthouse.com. by checking the source code of the page, i found that they indeed link to an rdf document
.
ICRA seems to be a content-rating organization. they have a web-based questionnaire, which supposedly (info from wikipedia) generates an RDF file, which then describes the rating of the site’s content, which you can link from your website. the rating seems to be focused on the parental-control aspect.
it was certainly surprising/refreshing to see that one of the early-adopters of the semantic-web technology is a porn site :)
(maybe these porn sites must include some kind of rating/parental-control stuff, i don’t know. i checked www.playboy.com, and they did not link to any rdf documents…. )
]]>but somehow i cannot see how it could help me currently. don’t get me wrong, i understand it’s benefits (making the web machine-readable). but i don’t see any PRACTICAL applications of this technology currently. nevertheless, i’m always willing to try out new toys in this field.
today i’ve read a blog post about using semantic-web-stuff on your blog. so i immediately decided to try it out.
there was a wordpress plugin recommended, which i installed.
the plugin simply generates some machine-readable about your blog posts in SIOC format.
additionally, after you have set it up, and so you have SIOC data available about your blog, you can notify about your blog posts the Ping the Semantic Web service, which seems to be a semantic-data indexing/searching system. (this notification can happen automatically by wordpress, if you decide so).
on the Ping the Semantic Web site, they list the recently updated RDF documents.
and what did i find there? http://galleries.penthouse.com/labels.rdf :)
yes, a link to an RDF document at Penthouse’s website. i must admit, i was surprised. what do they have to do with RDF? so i went to http://galleries.penthouse.com, which redirected me to http://www.penthouse.com. by checking the source code of the page, i found that they indeed link to an rdf document
.
ICRA seems to be a content-rating organization. they have a web-based questionnaire, which supposedly (info from wikipedia) generates an RDF file, which then describes the rating of the site’s content, which you can link from your website. the rating seems to be focused on the parental-control aspect.
it was certainly surprising/refreshing to see that one of the early-adopters of the semantic-web technology is a porn site :)
(maybe these porn sites must include some kind of rating/parental-control stuff, i don’t know. i checked www.playboy.com, and they did not link to any rdf documents…. )
]]>currently i’m waiting for the DNS servers to update their data, but basically: if you see this post, then you are seeing my blog already on dreamhost.
]]>currently i’m waiting for the DNS servers to update their data, but basically: if you see this post, then you are seeing my blog already on dreamhost.
]]>after reading some more about the subject, it seems that it’s a bit more complicated.
now, i am really, really not that good in japanese, so the following is only how i understood the rules. they might be completely wrong. the examples were taken from sci.lang.japan
generally it seems that you do
so, for example, in the following dialogue:
>A: What is Bob? >B: Bob is an idiot.
the second line is translated using WA:
>B: Bobu WA baka desu.
but in this dialogue:
>A: Who is an idiot? >B: Bob is an idiot.
GA is used:
>B: Bobu GA baka desu
for this reason, when there is a longer conversation, it’s usually started with GA, and continued with WA.
some more examples:
>Inu ga heya ni haitte kimashita. >Inu wa boku no gohan o tabete shimaimashita.
>A: Hora, asoko mite. Tanaka-san ga iru. Kare wa eigo no sensei janaika? >B: Tanakasan wa gakusei-da. Tainakasan ga sensei da.
to learn more, search for “WA GA” on the sci.lang.japan group
]]>after reading some more about the subject, it seems that it’s a bit more complicated.
now, i am really, really not that good in japanese, so the following is only how i understood the rules. they might be completely wrong. the examples were taken from sci.lang.japan
generally it seems that you do
so, for example, in the following dialogue:
>A: What is Bob? >B: Bob is an idiot.
the second line is translated using WA:
>B: Bobu WA baka desu.
but in this dialogue:
>A: Who is an idiot? >B: Bob is an idiot.
GA is used:
>B: Bobu GA baka desu
for this reason, when there is a longer conversation, it’s usually started with GA, and continued with WA.
some more examples:
>Inu ga heya ni haitte kimashita. >Inu wa boku no gohan o tabete shimaimashita.
>A: Hora, asoko mite. Tanaka-san ga iru. Kare wa eigo no sensei janaika? >B: Tanakasan wa gakusei-da. Tainakasan ga sensei da.
to learn more, search for “WA GA” on the sci.lang.japan group
]]>
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2006 00:21:35 GMT
Server: Apache
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.4.4-pl6-gentoo with Hardening-Patch
X-Pingback: http://www.nekomancer.net/blog/xmlrpc.php
ETag: "ebbfe181885d8db233d59464b69d0389"
Set-Cookie: bb2_screener_=1162599696+217.67.16.60; path=/blog/
Last-Modified: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 23:50:08 GMT
Content-Type: application/atom+xml; charset=UTF-8
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2006 00:22:15 GMT
Server: Apache
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.4.4-pl6-gentoo with Hardening-Patch
Content-Type: text/html
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2006 00:21:35 GMT
Server: Apache
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.4.4-pl6-gentoo with Hardening-Patch
X-Pingback: http://www.nekomancer.net/blog/xmlrpc.php
ETag: "ebbfe181885d8db233d59464b69d0389"
Set-Cookie: bb2_screener_=1162599696+217.67.16.60; path=/blog/
Last-Modified: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 23:50:08 GMT
Content-Type: application/atom+xml; charset=UTF-8
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2006 00:22:15 GMT
Server: Apache
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.4.4-pl6-gentoo with Hardening-Patch
Content-Type: text/html
for some reason those feeds always contain the last n entries, where n is a fixed number.
]]>for some reason those feeds always contain the last n entries, where n is a fixed number. so a feed contains let’s say the last 10 entries.
this is fine as long as the page (which is represented in the feed) does not get updated too often.
otherwise the following scenario might happen:
the problem is, that these feeds do not provide any guarantees about their “completeness”.
(this is not an “in theory only” problem. once i had this exact problem.a website’s feed only contained the last x (50, iirc) entries, and much more arrived daily. so i kept missing them, and if i wanted to be sure that i saw all of them, i had to manually go through the entries on the site. kind of defeats the purpose of the feed. nowadays i’m using bloglines, which is fetching the feeds a lot more often than i did, so i do not have the problem with that site anymore)
what i would like to see, is feeds that contain all the entries for a specified timeframe.for example for the last 48 hours. they can contain of course more entries, but they would have to guarantee, that they contain at least all the entries for the last 48 hours. which would mean, that if you fetch the feed daily, you will not miss any entries.
for example, let’s do it in django:
django contains a complete feed-framework, with documentation, so first go and read the documentation
as you see, the whole issue of “showing the last n entries” is being handled in the items() method:
(the example from the documentation)
def items(self): return NewsItem.objects.order_by('-pub_date')[:5]
we want to return at least 10 entries, and we want to make sure that we return all the entries for the last 48 hours.
so we could use something like this:
from datetime import datetime, timedelta def items(self): entries = NewsItem.objects.order_by('-pub_date') two_days_ago = datetime.now() - timedelta(days=2) last_entries = entries.filter(pub_date__gte = two_days_ago) if last_entries.count() >= 10: return last_entries else: return entries[:10]
and we’re done.
now if only i could find out how to do it in wordpress (this blog is running on it)
P.S: the code i showed here was not tested extensively, so it might contain bugs. but the basic idea should work.
]]>until today, when i have read part 2 of darkmirage’s japanese lessons.
generally darkmirage’s japanese lessons are very unique, because he approaches the japanese language from an anime-centric point of view. his example sentences and explanations all use terms that are known to an anime fan. so it’s always interesting to read his lessons, even if you already know the topic the lesson is about.
now back to WA/GA.
these 2 dialogues from the mentioned blog post made it clear for me:
> Person A: “tama-nee wa kami ga akakute nagai desu” (Tama-nee has red long hair) > Person B: “ashi ga nagai desu” (Her legs are long) > Me: “mune ga ookii desu!” (Her……nevermind)
> Person A: “doraemon wa ashi ga hikui desu” (Doraemon’s legs are short) > Person B: “konomi-chan mo hikui desu” (Konomi-chan’s legs are short too) > Me: “tama-nee wa nagai desu” (Tama-nee’s legs are long)
make sure to read the whole article, and also the other lessons
EDIT: it seems this topic is a lot more complicated
]]>until today, when i have read part 2 of darkmirage’s japanese lessons.
generally darkmirage’s japanese lessons are very unique, because he approaches the japanese language from an anime-centric point of view. his example sentences and explanations all use terms that are known to an anime fan. so it’s always interesting to read his lessons, even if you already know the topic the lesson is about.
now back to WA/GA.
these 2 dialogues from the mentioned blog post made it clear for me:
> Person A: “tama-nee wa kami ga akakute nagai desu” (Tama-nee has red long hair) > Person B: “ashi ga nagai desu” (Her legs are long) > Me: “mune ga ookii desu!” (Her……nevermind)
> Person A: “doraemon wa ashi ga hikui desu” (Doraemon’s legs are short) > Person B: “konomi-chan mo hikui desu” (Konomi-chan’s legs are short too) > Me: “tama-nee wa nagai desu” (Tama-nee’s legs are long)
make sure to read the whole article, and also the other lessons
EDIT: it seems this topic is a lot more complicated
]]>please, please, pretty please use raw_id_admin (django model docs).
because, when you have a model that contains a ForeignKey (and people usually have ForeignKeys), then when you use an automatic manipulator for the given model, it will load in ALL THE DATA FROM ALL THE RELATED MODELS. for example, if you have 20.000 entries in the related table, then it will load in all those 20.000 entries.
except, if you use raw_id_admin. it’s an attribute of the ForeignKey, and contrary to the documentation, it’s effect is not restricted to the admin-framework.
Joseph Heck made some speed-tests regarding this issue
]]>please, please, pretty please use raw_id_admin (django model docs).
because, when you have a model that contains a ForeignKey (and people usually have ForeignKeys), then when you use an automatic manipulator for the given model, it will load in ALL THE DATA FROM ALL THE RELATED MODELS. for example, if you have 20.000 entries in the related table, then it will load in all those 20.000 entries.
except, if you use raw_id_admin. it’s an attribute of the ForeignKey, and contrary to the documentation, it’s effect is not restricted to the admin-framework.
Joseph Heck made some speed-tests regarding this issue
]]>for a long time i have been searching for a simple way to encrypt files. my needs were very simple. i needed to encrypt only one file, but the encryption had to be strong. a typical scenario was that i had to transfer a file between two places by uploading to a public place and the downloading from there.
and then i found gnupg.
it should be available on any linux system. for osx use fink or darwinports. (for windows, switch to linux)
let’s say i have fakatona.mp3.
encryption:
gpg -c fakatona.mp3fakatona.mp3.gpgdecryption:
gpg fakatona.mp3.gpgfor extra security through obscurity you can rename the encrypted file to basically anything. gpg will figure out the original filename by the decryption.
]]>for a long time i have been searching for a simple way to encrypt files. my needs were very simple. i needed to encrypt only one file, but the encryption had to be strong. a typical scenario was that i had to transfer a file between two places by uploading to a public place and the downloading from there.
and then i found gnupg.
it should be available on any linux system. for osx use fink or darwinports. (for windows, switch to linux)
let’s say i have fakatona.mp3.
encryption:
gpg -c fakatona.mp3fakatona.mp3.gpgdecryption:
gpg fakatona.mp3.gpgfor extra security through obscurity you can rename the encrypted file to basically anything. gpg will figure out the original filename by the decryption.
]]>