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Comment Re:But... it's a Treyarch game. (Score 1) 69

by Laz10 (#32229726) Attached to: <em>CoD: Black Ops</em> To Get Dedicated Game Servers
I liked World of War a lot better than Modern Warfare 2.
The sole reason for that is that I find 48 people in a game much more fun than 12 people.

It's a battle rather than a skirmish.

Also World of war had free map packs, rather than the 14&euro; MW2 ones.

I look forward to Black ops. I wouldn't have bought the game if it was like MW2.

Comment Refactoring (Score 3, Interesting) 168

by Laz10 (#32069634) Attached to: Chains of RFCs and Chains of Laws?
I have actually been thinking about this.

Just like Computer Science got Design Patterns from architecture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander)

Lawmakes should take the concept of refactoring from computer science (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring)

Comment Re:Author should look into Scala (Score 1) 253

by Laz10 (#31900978) Attached to: Thoughts On the State of Web Development
I second the recommodation of Scala.

Java has payed my bills for the last 10 years. But as the time has passed I have gotten more and more annoyed by things I can't express and limitations in the language.

Scala fixes each and every issue I have with java and I feel I could jump right in and be more productive within a few days of using scala.

Scala does have a lot of clever features, but I think that you should view them as optional rather than mandatory.
Yes you CAN write code that is 1/10 of java code and make it so terse that it can be hard to follow (though still not as obscure as some perl or ruby code that I have seen).

It is better to "just" write code that is about half the size and get better readability than java.

And unlike groovy you keep java's performance.

I am not so sure that Lift will get to be the #1 framework, but
I really think that the Scala language will take off as the sole heir to the java throne in 2010.

Comment Scala (Score 3, Interesting) 491

I am surprised how they manage to get scala to perform so much worse than pure java.

Scala compiles to pure java .class files and uses static typing and the makes claim that the bytecodes are almost identical.

I wonder if the benchmarks are executed in the same environment.
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/ has a Gentoo label behind the java benchmarks, but not the Scala one.

Comment Re:Meanwhile Linux Continues To Be A Trainwreck (Score 1) 305

by Laz10 (#26939411) Attached to: Shuttleworth Announces Karmic Koala

After 5 years of Ubuntu, I finally dropped it as my primary system after I got a new computer. I just couldn't deal with all the work involved in getting it to look just halfway acceptable.

The default fonts are just -- yikes! I couldn't even read the websites. I looks like the size difference between font point sizes are too big, so where the headers are not too big, the normal text font will be too small - or the other way around. Also, capital letters seems to be too tall.
- And I just hate to brown. Good thing they will fix that!

Yes, you can tweak everything, but it is just so hard to tweak it balanced. If you tweak one end it seems like you will just get a problem somewhere else.

Comment HIG (Score 1) 305

by Laz10 (#26939397) Attached to: Shuttleworth Announces Karmic Koala

That is a lot of bugs to file ...

Wouldn't it be more productive if there existed some detailed style guide/HIG.

I know that one exists, but it isn't very prominent and seems to lack good detailed examples.
Input Devices

Dvorak Layout Claimed Not Superior To QWERTY 663

Posted by kdawson from the contra-network-effects dept.
Michael Pyne sends in an article published at Reason Online 13 years ago, dismantling the entrenched myth that the Dvorak keyboard layout is a superior technology to QWERTY. The odd thing is that this 13-year-old article recaps research (refereed and published in a respected economics journal) 19 years ago. While we have discussed Dvorak many times over the years, I don't believe we have dug into this convincing-sounding refutation of the Dvorak mythology. The article is in the context of arguing against the conventional wisdom of "first mover advantage" — that the first product to market gains a large entrenchment benefit, such as VHS vs. Beta, MS-DOS vs. anything, etc. It's very much a pro-markets piece.

Comment Scala is a multi-paradigm language (Score 1) 759

by Laz10 (#22788466) Attached to: What Programming Languages Should You Learn Next?
"Scala is a modern multi-paradigm programming language designed to express common programming patterns in a concise, elegant, and type-safe way. It smoothly integrates features of object-oriented and functional languages."
http://www.scala-lang.org/intro/index.html

Functional programming is just a part of it. You don't have to use it. Just like you don't have to use generics in java.

If you want to you can use it write something that just looks like cleaner java programs in Scala. That what makes it easy to learn.
I am sure that as soon as the tools get up to speed, we will start seeing people building great things with Scala.

What Programming Languages Should You Learn Next? 759

Posted by Zonk from the anything-but-haskell dept.
simoniker writes "Over at Dobbs Code Talk, Chris Diggins has been discussing programming languages beyond C++ or Java, suggesting options such as Ruby ('does a great job of showing how powerful a dynamic language can be, and leverages powerful ideas from Smalltalk, Perl, and Lisp') but suggesting Scala as a first choice ('Very accessible to programmers from different backgrounds.') What would your choice be for programmers extending beyond their normal boundaries?"
Google

Google's Silent Monopoly 425

Posted by CmdrTaco from the something-to-think-about dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Isaac Garcia from Central Desktop Blog writes, 'How much does Google pay *itself* to claim the top ad position for searches relevant to its own products? Google holds the top advertisement (Adword) slot for the following key words: intranet, spreadsheet, documents, calendar, word processor, email, video, instant messenger, blog, photo sharing, online groups, maps, start page, restaurants, dining, and books... ...if you are trying to advertise a product that is competitive to Google, then you'll never be able to receive the Top Ad Position, no matter how much money you bid and spend. How different is it than MSFT placing its products (Internet Explorer) in a premium marketing position (embedded in the OS)?'"

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