Microsoft wasn't thoughtful enough to provide a port of Visual Basic for Linux. But there are lots of programs that deserve something between quick-and-dirty and full-on C or Java. Perl and Tcl were kind of filling that space, but one's write-only and the other isn't a complete system, but rather a way of stringing system tools together, one step up from raw shell scripts.

Python is Linux's version of Visual Basic. It's easy to understand, has a rich set of system interface libraries (which install without the frustration I tend to get from CPAN), is easy to write in, and even has code optimization support.

You could do worse.

Considering that Anaconda itself is written in python, that shark is about 15 years in the rear-view mirror. They didn't pick the name "Anaconda" for nothing.

I guess that python was an appropriate tool after all.

The problem is, there's no separation of concerns.

Fred Brook's Chief Programmer Team concept was based on the idea of a set of specialists each with separate concerns. In modern projects that would mean something like 1 (or more) person(s) for the web page design, possibly another (maybe on loan) for the artwork, maybe even 1 JavaScript expert and at least one person on the backend for the business logic and database interactions. Plus someone to co-ordinate it, architect it and - the horror! someone to document it.

However, getting people who are really good together and getting them to work together is espensive. In the current climate, it's considered smarter to demand that one single person fulfill (and be expert in) all of the above functions. This actually can take longer, since there's no opportunity for parallelization, but since it's less people, it's cheaper. Bonus points for getting it done offshore.

Quality? Security? Pffft! We'll do that in 2.0. Or maybe 4.0. Or not.

Yes. It's being dropped because it gave the illusion of security without the actuality.

Unfortunately, a LOT of very public websites are running on old expired certs, which isn't really any better.

People need to stop thinking that "software doesn't wear out" - meaning in this case, the security vouchers. Bits may remain unchanged, but the world does not, and if you expect the entire cost of the system is what you paid for at the "cash register" without accounting for ongoing maintenance, you're a fool.

Unfortunately, a lot more employers are demanding quick-and-dirty JavaScript-style solutions than rigorous close-to-the-metal C solutions.

Because getting a pretty UI up in a hurry makes it look "done", but making something with quality takes time without "doing anything" that PHBs and users can see.

And will someone PLEASE tell IBM and Oracle that?

I like Systemd in concept. It potentially allows setting up dependencies from the outside, much as Inversion of Control does in software. Meaning that the systems don't need to know as much about other systems because it's wired into the overall system configuration. And, unlike init scripts, you can make the management of subsystems dependent on the actual state of other subsystems, not simply assume that because one was scheduled to come up before another that that's what actually happened.

However, the one thing you should absolutely positively NEVER do is replace a major product with one that lacks critical commonly-used functions of the original product, and that's the fatal problem with not only systemd, but Gnome 3, and some would argue various versions of Nautilus.

And when developers ignore the angry mobs, tell them that they're unappreciative or stupid, or otherwise incapable of recognizing a Superior Product when they see it doesn't do any good for anyone. If your new shiny toy doesn't cut it, you either need to add those critical functions before shoving the old system off the pier or admit that your design is too flawed to handle it and go back to the drawing board.

I like systemd in concept and am prepared to become a full convert. But only when it restores the essential functions that systemd provided.

However, I totally loathe systemd's partner in crime journalctl and frankly don't see myself ever learning to love it. Too much replacing simple functions with complex commands and too much opacity in the log storage itself.

ActiveDirectory has less functionality than OpenLDAP. As for ease of administration, I set an OpenLDAP up last week. The hard part isn't setting up the server, it's maintaining the data in the server and for that I've used a Java GUI app for years.

I have installed Windows and Linux quite a bit over the years and for a long time, Windows was the ease-of-use winner. Especially in the very early days when I had to crack open the box, read off all the vendor and model information on the video and network cards, fiddle with DIP switches and hunt down drivers. For about 5 years now, however, it has actually been easier to install a Red Hat/Fedora or Ubuntu Linux for desktop use than it has been to install Windows.

And OSX isn't that different from Linux. If it's really easier to use it's simply because Apple corrals specializes in that. One of the ways they do that is by restricting what you can do with it. Linux is messier, true, but not really that much harder to administer via a DDD (drag/drop/drool) UI these days.

Ease of installation of commercial products can be problematical, definitely. A lot of the complex products are inexcusably difficult to install regardless of the target OS. However, that's really up to the vendor. And yes, it's true that commercial apps are frequently available only on selected distros. But that's partly because since they're closed-source and don't want to pay for the extra work to make their stuff run on every distro in the world no one else can handle the porting.

Scrabble [TM]

Not necessarily. There's only one alleged case of a Minotaur, for example.

They're not the only ones. The IBM mainframes have long been VMs implemented on top of various microcode platforms. In fact, one of the original uses of the 8-inch floppy disk was to hold the VM that would be loaded up during the Initial Microprogram Load (IMPL), before the IPL (boot) of the actual OS. So in a sense, the Project Hercules mainframe emulator is just repeating history.

Nor were they unusual. In school I worked with a minicomputer which not only was a VM on top of microcode, but you could extend the VM by programming to the microcode yourself.

The main differences between RISC and CISC, as I recall were lots of registers and the simplicity of the instruction set. Both the Intel and zSeries CISC instruction sets have lots of registers, though. So the main difference between RISC and CISC would be that you could - in theory - optimize "between" the CISC instructions if you coded RISC instead.

Presumably somebody tried this, but didn't get benefits worth shouting about.

Incidentally, the CISC instruction set of the more recent IBM z machines includes entire C stdlib functions such as strcpy in a single machine-language instruction.

Who says we don't do metric? They can hardly keep those 3-liter bottles of Coke on the shelves at Wal-Mart!

Or maybe it's Russia the considers Europe as part of them.

Unfortunately, while it's true that CEOs may think that they're getting something special from IBM, those days are long gone.

I worked at a Fortune company in the 1990s with 2 IBM mainframes, but getting OS/2 support was a lost cause. Even when IBM managed to dig up someone competent, they'd leave IBM within months.

I've been working on a project for 2 years that's supposed to work on an iSeries machine, but for some reason the database is really crawling for network clients. IBM finally put someone on the case back in March, but has only half-heartedly helped. Still nothing usable.

The sale rep may roll up in a Mercedes, but the sad truth is that the actual work has been handed off to the cheapest people they could hire. It was really frustrating back in 1996 when I could easily find help for Linux, which had no major corporate supporter at the time, than I could get help for OS/2, with allegedly the support of one of the largest computer companies in the world.

I believe in paying for quality, but where's the quality?

It won't work. Some people are so proud of their ignorance that they brag about it before launching into assertions based on "common sense" instead of knowledge.