so you're saying you should only have a language that allows you to code in, say, metric.

For safety, right.

Then what happens when you come across a 3rd party system, written in a different system, that only supports imperial. This is why having the flexibility is a benefit.

You can't fix stupid, so don't try to straitjacket everyone just because some people cannot code or design properly.

TBH I think C++ is very overlooked as a web development system. If you're any good with it (ie not some n00b who thinks PHP is the best, or a javascript dev who thinks its the only language there is) then you can do very well in it.

There are many web servers written in C++ that are designed to run the server code as well (often used for embedded systems to provide a GUI, but strangely always get hammered in benchmarks to show how fast they are - maybe its an efficiency thing for small devices, but has a side-effect of being very fast for larger-scale systems).

Sure, there's no built-in code for handling common web use-cases, but there's many a library for everything in C/C++ land.

If not, you can still write a service in C++ and call it from any web serve front-end, that's the way you get scalability and security and everyone should do it (after all those cases of hacked webservers allowing the attacker to dump all passwords from the database - wtf did the web server have any access to the DB server.. oh yeah, lazy architecture choices)

I'd have a look at Mongoose for an example. Trivially easy to code a web site with - I used it to embed a web server in existing code that needed to serve a new GUI.

Don't forget Erlang - designed for uptime.

Personally, I think the C++ option is still the best, only you write your application tier in it, and access it from a ... well whatever you care to use, web server front end. The point is the serious logic goes in the app tier and the presentation tier can be any old crap you can get a junior to write cheaply.

erm... you mean support like this. LTS for 5 years, could be worse.

no, he's not. He's saying what if he has circumstances that mean the traditional or cookie-cutter bridges do not fit the situation he finds himself in.

Then there are also areas where you want to innovate somewhat. I mean, imagine an upside-down suspension bridge... that'd be so far stupid no-one would consider making anything like it, and any language that let you was brain-dead..... but someone went and made one anyway (even though it did suffer teething problems - such is the curse of making something new).

Sometimes you need the power to express yourself differently, and whilst there is a lot to be said for standardised systems that let you build standardised products, I'm not convinced the stuff that lets you build such standard sites are all they should be (esp. re security).

depends what you dump in there. Heavy metals don't get processed to anything else and tend to be poisonous to most organisms. Some plastics are so stable they only get processed after many decades.

And all that said, the Earth doesn't care about you or I, so we have to be a little more sensible about doing a dump. Eventually there's no places left that you haven't shat on and you end up having to sit in it.

i actually agree there - Win8 should have been touchscreen mandatory.

but.. that means they'd have had to keep Windows 7 running in parallel for all the non-touchscreens out there. I think this wouldn't be such a bad thing (as its the status quo after all) and if MS released a servicepack to update the components to the same Win8 codebase, they'd have little extra maintenance work.

But then, why not just simply make Win8 into 2 different GUI based OSes - after all, Window Server can be run headless, so why not split Win8 into base OS and then slap different GUIs on it.

And at this point we've gone full circle and end up with Windows 9. Desktop and Metro in one OS. I imagine they have to do this as they created that new programming API for metro apps and you can't really have 2 OSes with different programming models.

yeah, its almost certainly not the fish, it must be the micro-organisms.

Now, if I can only think.. what eats the micro-organisms in the oceans?

Of course its in the fucking food supply. You shit in the ocean, something eats it and we end up eating that. If we're lucky its only shit which is a naturally bio-degradable food source for plants. If we're unlucky, its the various poisons we dumped in there too, 'cos it was cheaper than processing them.

but that's what they did with Vista - all the old hardware needed new drivers to support the new driver model, and if the manufacturer didn't support the old kit... too bad, time to buy a replacement.

1. your OO is wring in this case. IF you have an addition parameter used in a base class that is only used in derived classes, then you should have a base class that has a pure virtual method. You then provide implementations in your derived classes, as before.

2. If you are conditionally compiling, conditionally exclude this variable too. Then you'll get errors for the places where you accidentally used that variable outside conditional sections.

Or just use the pragmas to disable the warning, but modifying the bad code that raises them is a better choice.

it was a 3 tier system.. web servers talked to app servers which talked to the DB server.

Each comms channel was secured so if an attacker exploited the web server (as happens too often) then the attacker had to get past the other layers of security to even reach the DB, let alone export any customer passwords. When you realise many of the modules running on the app servers had limited access to the DB too, you realise that it was as secure as you're likely to get.

reminds me of a previous company.

It had a very well designed 3 tier architecture with a good set of security policies. One of which was that the web servers didn't have any connection tot he database servers, not even cabled.

Then the director of a acquired company was told his PHP website was to be put on the production servers, his attitude was one of "well, we'll put the web site on the webservers and just punch a hole in the firewall to the DB".

When he was told that couldn't physically be done... his attitude was "ok, we'll have to install the PHP website on the application servers then and route web requests to it".

I wasn't impressed.

its a n underrated point - why don't software engineers have to make products as reliable and good as more expensive engineering projects... and I think the clue in is that question.

Why can't a software engineer make something that is as reliable as a bridge? Because a bridge costs a flipping fortune and can't really be reworked after implementation, so there's a huge incentive to get the entire team together to get it right. And that means the people who really make the bridge are the architects and project managers. In software terms, we have few architects and they're usually crap ex-developers who think they know it all, and project managers who are incompetents who think it was a job they can hide their lack of skill in. Meanwhile you have a load of developers who think they are the only ones who can do the job.

A really good software project would require a technical architect who really understood what was happening and how things worked, and a project manager who understood timescales based on experience and managing the project deliveries and organisation.

It would also require a project based on old technologies - no-one really has time to get to grips with something like 'real' engineers have to do because the platform they stand on gets whipped out from under them all the damn time - which is also a problem as the idiots who don't know a thing use this as an excuse to hide their lack of talent too (how many times have you heard that someone wants to rewrite in cool new technology almost for the sake of it - you can guarantee its because they can't hack doing the boring work maintaining or improving the old stuff, a lack of skill they'd still have if they did get to rewrite - no rewrite ever is any good, its almost always an even worse PoS).

So all in all, there's a huge lack of professionalism in software caused by a lot of factors but I think the biggest one is the real lack of earned experience. We don't allow the good stuff to be built upon, we throw it away and start again with something else. We throw the good staff away and say they're not keeping up with technology. We hire kids because they have some buzzword on their CV.

Anyway, we don't hold software engineers to the same high standards because we refuse to accept old, working stuff. We only want cheap new shiny crap. Its no wonder the software world has turned out like it has.

not really - it has nothing to do with phones. Its all about the back-end services, and the advertising companies they can sell you to.

In the past, the software and the device was the product, you paid and you used it Now its different, the software is the hook and you're the fish. Sometimes they put some juicy tidbit on the end to attract you like 15Gb free storage.

Some people do pay the subs, but they're generally for old technology companies - like phone service providers. Everyone else is getting their money through more round-about ways, like advertising: we all pay extra for products that we buy, and that extra is given to the ad companies and service providers like Microsoft.

In short, they simply shifted the tax on us so we no longer notice we're paying it.

meh. The real kickstarters will have run off with all the cash if they have any sense whatsoever.#

No, much easier to go after the easy target.. that's what American justice is all about, right?