Today's BASIC is JavaScript. And it's already on all the mobile devices. Even evil control-freak Apple's stuff. Young people already know this and do not need your Commodore/Apple/Atari nostalgia trips.
Also, parachute pants are no longer a thing.
Please update your expectations and wardrobe appropriately.
For me, the remarkable thing is that while Paul Graham wondered aloud about the hundred year language, the one we'd be using a century from now, he completely overlooked C and how long it had already remained not just relevant, but dominant. C was released in 1973, meaning it's nearly at the end of its fourth decade, and it's number 2 (and gaining!) on this month's TIOBE chart (from their summary: "Java lost almost 1% of its popularity in September. If this trend continues, C will be number one again next month."). Put another way, C is 38% of the way to a century of dominance, and there currently few if any signs of its imminent abandonment.
ESR once referred to C's "austere elegance" as something C++ lacks, and I think that neatly pins down what I like about C. I've personally been reintroduced to C over the last few years by the lower-level Mac and iOS frameworks (notably Core Audio), and it's truly nice for doing things like signal processing, where the formality and fussiness of higher-level languages and frameworks would just get in the way.
Also, trashing Steve Jobs doesn't help celebrate Dennis Ritchie's accomplishments, so can we drop that from the thread?
...Van Pelt, from "Peanuts", sitting out in the pumpkin patch every Halloween, convinced that his sincerity will be rewarded by a visit from the Great Pumpkin.
I didn't think that anyone was seriously predicting the "Year of the Linux Desktop" anymore, which ran its course as a failed prediction about five years ago, and became tiresome even as a joke a couple years after that.
The flat line that Adobe cited in giving up on AIR for Linux tells the story of Desktop Linux's stagnation over the last few years pretty succinctly, and there were plenty of recessionary years in the last decade that should already have provided ample opportunity for cost-conscious users to switch. Hasn't happened, and there is no plausible reason to think it will now.
It's unfortunate that Schwartz's blog is gone, and that ZDNet didn't drill down a little more carefully to check dates on things. I was working with Sun on the java.net site at the time, through a contract with O'Reilly. As I recall, the story is actually somewhat worse. The rumor mill reported that Android would be using Java, and Schwartz went off half-cocked and praised Google for the "Java/Linux platform". Writing for java.net, I said "But I didn't end up putting this on the front page, because I just couldn't source the Java angle well enough (no offense, Jonathan, but you did say ZFS would be on Leopard...)." (that's the current editor's headshot on the page, not me, BTW).
Not too much later, Google laid out the details of Android, including the Dalvik VM, which meant that Google was only using Java the language (which it didn't have to license) and not Java the VM (which it would have had to). What I heard through the back channel was that Sun was pissed, believing it had been stabbed in the back. This made for a very awkward scene at Sun's mobile-focused "ME Developer Days" a few months later in January 2008: the Sun people had clearly been told to not talk about Android or acknowledge it in any way, which led of a few awkward moments of dancing around the elephant in the room. The first night of the conference, the Java Posse stopped by for dinner, and upon seeing Dick Wall (who at that time worked at Google), the first thing I said to him was "man, are they pissed at you guys."
Relevant dates and links:
Anyways, assuming my recollection of events and this timeline is accurate, Schwartz's blog should not be taken as an indication that Sun knew about and approved what Google was doing with Android. What it does prove is what a lot of people knew then but wouldn't say: Schwartz was a clueless loud-mouthed buffoon who happily fiddled away on his blog as SUNW burned.
Both Apple and Microsoft were commercial Java licensees. Apple's JVMs included all of the standard classes, plus some additional hooks to Mac-specific functionality that were clearly packaged as extensions (com.apple.*, quicktime.*, etc.). Microsoft's VM deliberately left out core functionality -- JNI for native calls and RMI for remote procedure calls -- and disguised Windows-specific calls as if they were typical Java calls, which could result in Java code that would only run on Windows.
I don't think it's a matter of "allowing" anyways. Sun/Oracle wants companies to purchase Java licenses. They do offer their own JVM for Windows, Linux, and Solaris, but that's mostly to keep developers happy. Even on these platforms, you have always been able to install third-party JVMs, like IBM's, or Oracle's JRocket.
This being
It's not piracy, it's an appallling refusal to give away one's work for free.
I'm more intrigued by the apparent ascendance of Go, which is not tied into popular frameworks (say, the way that Obj-C has Cocoa and Cocoa Touch, and C has, um, everything), and is presumably succeeding on its own terms as a language. The fact that it has Google behind it probably doesn't hurt either.
Who knows, it might turn out to be a great successor to Obj-C/C for iPhone developme... oh, wait... section 3.3.1 and the goddamn Apple-Google pissing match. Never mind.
Crediting Clojure's growth to LISP seems a stretch, but I'm not going to complain too loudly, because I still love LISP.
I hate the article for not stating whether those are key frames or P-frames.
A typical user wouldn't know the difference, so why should the reviewer get to pick and choose? The whole point of the review is subjective visual comparison, blind to the implementation details.
Give author Jan Ozer some credit: he's been Streaming Media's compression expert for a long time, and knows what he's talking about.
just what the point of this hire is? Apple-bashing aside, is it just to put the shiny open-source face on Google? That didn't exactly save his previous employer, who also hired him for apparent PR value and where he accomplished nothing of sufficient significance to merit inclusion on his Wikipedia bio.
Perhaps if Apple is very, very lucky, Google will hire Jonathan Schwartz too.
Scientists will study your brain to learn more about your distant cousin, Man.
