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Software in 2014
121–130 of 265 posts
Re: Software in 2014
#122Software engineers are typically good at building things meant for other engineers. That's why some of the most robust, rock-solid, reliable pieces of software engineering are, e.g. OS kernels and language compilers. So Tim Bray is right in saying that we needn't worry about the server side. The server side is in good hands. Also true that the client side sucks, and I see only one way of fixing it: engineers have to…
"... is meant for humans, not engineers" Engineers are humans... most of them anyway... I think. "Software engineers are typically good at building things meant for other engineers." You're not capturing the essence though, software engineers use Android as well as Linux on their desktops. I think it's more the way they approach user-interfaces. Engineers tend to reason from the bottom-up, but for good product design…
> Apple probably lacks both of these conditions right now, the usability of my iPhone is deteriorating so fast that I might as well switch to Android.
Can you elaborate on this?
Re: Software in 2014
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In what freezing fucking hell is a dual-core, 1 GHz computer with gigabytes of RAM and tens of gigabytes of storage and 3D acceleration that can fit in my pocket memory-starved and CPU-starved? Sounds to me like you've never developed seriously on an ARM chipset. These devices are worlds apart from your standard desktop, there is a reason that both Android and IOS dropped Adobe flash. It's partly the hardware and p…
Supposedly (and I'm being quite serious) the Surface 2 plays flash websites quite nicely in IE.
I think modern Android and iOS devices could do that just as well.
I believe not supporting Flash has more to do with Apple/Google strategies (i.e. not depending on propietary third party software) than actual hardware limitations.
Re: Software in 2014
#124"JavaScript is horrible." > function byNum(a,b) {return +a>+b} undefined > [5, 10, 1].sort(byNum) [1, 5, 10] No, it's not.
The point is not that it's impossible to numerically sort an array of numbers in JavaScript; it's that calling the sort function on such an array doesn't do that. That's a surprise to most developers, I'm sure, and surprises in languages and libraries are bad.
Re: Software in 2014
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The update cycles are slow. Days in the case of iOS ... Last time I tried it was hours, although not instant as you might hope. >What’s worse is that you can’t even count on people accepting the mobile-app updates you send them. IOS7 tries to help this with automatic updating. Users still have the choice of updating but if you state in the release notes that it's a fix for "data-losing account-compromising privacy-i…
> Last time I tried it was hours, although not instant as you might hope. Unless it's christmas, in which case you have to wait a week
Well the alternative is for Apple to rush updates unchecked.
How about an app that exploits the user, damages the phone through some sandboxing hole, and whatever?
Sure, those can still happen even with checks, but a whole bunch of them is removed.
(And yes, people have used updates in the past to pass malicious changes to apps).
Re: Software in 2014
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps not thousands. But do you use an online accounting package or do they use Sage or Pegasus? Do you use an online 3D modelling system or do you use Maya / Blender / 3DS Max / SolidWerks etc.? Do you use an online media player or do you use MPlayer / VLC / FFMPEG etc.? Do you play games online in a browser or do you play games written under DirectX / OpenGL that run natively? Was your time scheduled at work usin…
How many small businesses are making money shipping software on windows ?
What classes as a small business? Up to what size? I don't have figures but I have worked for 2 in the past that wrote software for Windows, one solely existing for the software, the other for complimenting their services with a side software product. They managed to turnover > £1million and >£4 million respectively.
Do we need to have thousands of companies listed in order for their software to qualify as "software" in your eyes?
The main point was that Tim ignored desktop native software in his analysis of software, which I felt was an oversight given that probably 98% of jobs involving a computer use desktop software all day long, software that was purchased. I do not see Doris in the admin office using a web browser all day long for her job.
Just because you and I might not be buying desktop software in droves does not mean that there isn't a market for it, a pretty sizeable market. Home users might not be buying masses of desktop software but companies still do, particularly through licensing. Tablets haven't changed the way many people do work at work. At home perhaps, but not work.
I am not sure what your point is or why the size of the business is important to what software is being produced...?
Re: Software in 2014
#127"It’s a pity some people still build important apps in PHP..." Getting real tired of seeing these baseless statements from so called software professionals. Here is an off-the-top-of-my-head list of features of modern day PHP: * yield * event * pthreads - yeap, real threads. * closures (including support for $this) * consistent hashing api * "finally" added to try-catch * empty() now supports expressions, rather than…
It's a pity that people still build important app in PHP, because despite improvements to PHP, there are several, even many, languages out there that beats PHP flat out on all fronts. PHP used to be by far the easiest language to get started with for web dev. This is not the case anymore. And while you're certainly entitled to disagreement, Tim Bray is about as far from "so called" you can get for a software professi…
"PHP used to be by far the easiest language to get started with for web dev. This is not the case anymore."
um - who would be the contenders? in terms of getting started, which also means deploying and see your stuff on something other than your local machine, I can't think of anything better supported than PHP. Most budget hosting you can simply upload your brand new, first-ever PHP script and have it 'just work'. No need to worry about wsgi, cgi-bin, application servers or anything.
As much as I loathe PHP because it sweeps the developer towards bad habits and unreadable, bug-ridden, slop, I love it because, rather like a bash, it's a flexible and comprehensive tool in my toolbox.
Re: Software in 2014
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In what freezing fucking hell is a dual-core, 1 GHz computer with gigabytes of RAM and tens of gigabytes of storage and 3D acceleration that can fit in my pocket memory-starved and CPU-starved? Those CPU don't have as much cache memory (which is vital for a CPU to be fast), are very low powered, and not cooled by any fan. Even my $50 nokia can do 3D, 3D acceleration doesn't mean it's a fast device. CPU frequency do…
> Those CPU don't have as much cache memory (which is vital for a CPU to be fast), are very low powered, and not cooled by any fan. They are, nonetheless, far more powerful than computers which ten years ago ran comparable applications of comparable feature and comparable eye candy complexity (if somewhat lacking in design taste). I think cache memory should mostly be irrelevant for many of the user-facing mobile app…
I think the point is more that without a decent cache, the speed of a cpu is greatly throttled to really be the speed of the memory feeding it.
Consider, for much of the task of browsing the web, the largest noticable speed problem is decidedly not the local device, but how long it takes for the data to load.
Re: Software in 2014
#129I think this paints a rather meagre picture of software development in 2014: > More or less everything is expected to talk HTTP, and it’s really easy to make things talk HTTP. A lot of things that shouldn't talk HTTP are expected to just because there's an army of programmers who don't know better. Also, it's actually hard to make things talk HTTP, partly due to HTTP itself. However, much of this complexity is hidden…
> Browsers are fine as long as you use them for what they are meant to be used A lot of people now want to use their browser for far more than that and browser technologies are evolving accordingly. I'd suggest it's been quite a while since browsers were meant to be used for nothing more than browsing html files.
> A lot of people now want to use their browser for far more than that
No. People want a way to quickly use new software. It's just that the easiest way to achieve this today is providing applications via the browser.
Re: Software in 2014
#130"JavaScript is horrible." > function byNum(a,b) {return +a>+b} undefined > [5, 10, 1].sort(byNum) [1, 5, 10] No, it's not.
Except it is, because your code doesn't work: > [10, 1, 5, 1, 10, 10, 1, 5, 5, 5, 10].sort(byNum) > [10, 10, 5, 1, 10, 1, 1, 5, 5, 5, 10] The right way is > function byNum(a, b) { return a - b; }
A bug in my code doesn't make javascript horrible, it makes me horrible for rushing to illustrate a point instead of just harrumphing internally and finishing my coffee.
Good catch.