London is a great place to visit.... but I would never want to live there again.

You arrive and you do all the tourist stuff in the first few weeks (musicals, theatre, dining out).... but after that it just is not worth it.... prices are high, living standards low (small cramped expensive apartments, going out expensive, etc.). I lived there for 1 year and 1 day. I harped that it was not a place that I wanted to live forever... and my PM a proud brit took exception to it to a certain extent. Only when he visited his counterpart in Texas did he actually get what we were talking about (his place was 20% the size and no cool cars in the driveway etc.)... and he was completely thrown.... I hear that he finally made the move to Australia.... something he originally thought he would never do.

I would never return to live... only to visit.

This mixing of C and Objective-C for the sake of making a point is ridiculous.

Objective-C IS NOT C. Darwin the operating system kernel underneath the UI is written in C, C++..... not Objective-C.

The UI APIs and Objective-C are what we are talking about... So no, Objective-C to continue being used going forward is not in the same league.

The difference is that .NET was developed and designed as an applications language with little regard to systems programming -- where the market .NET was aimed at was not replacing the language that was used for systems programming but providing an applications framework (more as a reaction to java than anything else).

Swift was designed from the ground up to be as performant as Objective-C and as a replacement language for the language that they actually write the APIs in. In essence Swift is a systems language as much as it is an applications language. Swift is designed to be AS performant as objective-c, which means their is little benefit to move forward with a less productive language.

The difference is that up until only recently there has been very very little new / competitive options in the systems languages area.

That will change over time. The code for the APIs (new or not) have been under development for a while - some of it ported from one platform to another, some of it built using other APIs...... as such developing new APIs on a system in flux before or during the first year would be a little risky. As all new application development (including bundled) applications - the majority of the application code itself will be swift based. At that point the only reason to continue to build new APIs (i.e. totally new code - not reworked or ported code) is if it provides some benefit - performance or not. As both Swift and Objective-C are new built on the LLVM, and as Swift matures and they invest money in optimization.... it leaves no reason to continue building in Objective-C other than legacy or legacy dependant reasons.

Swift in its first year has become the preferred language for developing on the Apple platform. Objective-C is being "improved" but only as a bridge to support interoperability with improvements that are being incorporated into Swift.

There is a lot of Objective-C code that will have to be maintained, and over time it will be replaced with Swift code... but it won't disappear overnight. In a year all new development is likely to be done in Swift, while Objective-C is just maintained.

Eventually -- in many years time as Objective-C code is revisited it will be phased out.... but it will be a very long time-frame.

If you are starting development on a new application - you would have to be very short-sighted to pick Objective-C as a starting point.

It should also be noted that in those same studies..... whites are pretty moronically stupid in comparison to their asian cousins :p

Chris Lattner started the LLVM project (basis for clang) before joining Apple. He was asking them a lot of questions in relation to his attempts to implement objective-c on it. Obviously Apple thought what he was doing was a great idea and hired him. I have no doubt that this was always in the plans since when quizzed about whether Swift would be open sourced they would not commit but always sounded open to the idea (i.e. they would not announce it until they were actually ready).

Any bus - whether it be USB, a PCIe card or thunderbolt will have security issues. Since thunderbolt tends to be used in higher priced devices -- it is not going to be very attractive generally to manufacture the malware infected hardware devices to connect to it.

Of course if we stopped allowing high speed / low latency devices to connect.... then more security could be added :o

Apple DOES NOT have an exclusive on thunderbolt.... It is more expensive to implement than USB and users have not been clamoring for it because USB tends to be "good enough" for most users. You can get thunderbolt in motherboards -- but they tend to be top of the line motherboards and not all of them.

I have had both an open concept office and I have also been in the situation where I have had an private office (as a developer/ team leader). If I am engaged in the work and I enjoy going into work and getting stuff done.... I prefer a more open environment (4 or 6 people on the same team). I found that when I had an office I found myself becoming more isolated and interacted with other developers less. Yes, I don't get interrupted as much -- but then people that I am managing get stuck more often and I don't notice... my productivity goes up and the team goes down....

If I am not engaged -- bored and not fully loaded with work.... then an office is better of course because you don't want others seeing you play mine-sweep or browsing the internet for other jobs....

Currently I just work at home, but if I had the option (I am 12 time zones away from work) I would actually prefer being in an office (open).... but the commute would be a killer :p I do find I have to call up people every few months to figure out what is going on.... and even then it is annoying being so far out of the loop. (if I am in work -- I know almost everything -- for some reason I have the innate ability to convince people I already know what I don't know and they tell me anyway).

We will have to make sure that anyone has a crystal installed in their palm.... and when you turn 30 .... you have to go to carousel.... and float up and pop.

We will also have to create a police force to track down resistance members (aka runners) and eliminate them....

Volcano erupts in Galapagos and lava flows down the hill to cover a nature preserve potentially wiping out ping iguanas..... God denounced for being anti-nature because he has replaced a preserve with a parking lot....

The popularity of Java is not because of it's "easy to read" nature, but because it is fairly forgiving for programmers that don't really know what they are really doing.

I programmed in Java for 15+ years and it is not the best language now (more of a legacy language) that tends to get riddled with boilerplate code which requires code generation and produces an outcome that is not as clear and concise as it could be.

It is however a forgiving language where if you don't understand memory management -- it is not a big problem. For example I remember a system written by programmers in another language that was riddled with memory leaks because of cylindrical references. The code was literally translated into java and all the problems disappeared. The programmers on that project just figured that the language that they programmed in was the problem -- but in reality java saved them from their inability to understand the basics of what they were doing.

If they do want to continue on but without those characters that are to be retired.... maybe they can do a spoof where god comes down and takes away all those with faith... leaving behind The Simpsons and taking Ned and the Reverend ... and even Skinner :p

There were only a couple good episodes this year..... I use to enjoy watching pretty well all the episodes, but it is more of a chore these days watching episodes - sometimes skipping through them waiting to find one gem in the rough.

It is close to the edge so it might just be the right opportunity to end the show.