Is that they don't become obsolete as fast? My mother still uses a iPad 2. I sold my iPad 4th generation to my wife's cousin, and she and I now both have an iPad Air 2. And to be honest, I just sold mine because I could, not because I needed to upgrade to the Air 2. I think the iPad 4th gen I sold will be OK for at least 2 more years. And it wouldn't surprise me if it will get an iOS 9 update. Moreover, it wouldn't surprise me if it will get an iOS 10 update as well.
Yup. Before Python Pascal was thought of as the language that was extremely readable; it was nearly like programming in pseudo code (hah, it was actually that a cleaner version of Pascal was used in several textbooks on algorithms). However, years ago when I had to port Pascal to Perl (no, I am not making this up) I came upon hundreds of lines of very hard to read code. After some careful study I discovered that someone had coded bubble sort (in a very weird, long winded way) with a separate piece of code to reverse the sort order. Basically sort { $b cmp $a } @items
My point is that how readable code is has also a lot to do if the implementation of an algorithm follows the expectations of the person reading the code. And (also) in Python there are many ways (really) to solve the same problem, including very unreadable ways.
I do agree that Perl has a lot of "line noise" like $, @, %, etc. but that's not that different from learning a language with a non-Latin alphabet (e.g. Hindi, which uses Devanagari). After a very short while (in my experience) those weird symbols become second nature and actually help with reading (they are there for a reason). It's even more fun when one of the major complains about Python is lack of some line noise; the use of significant white space instead of {}
Finally, while I have been doing some Python programming I am not attracted to the language. I don't know why I am attracted to Perl (and no, it's not because I am brainwashed by Perl). I think it's for the same reason that I consider Devanagari a very nice script. And why I am currently learning Haskell
alcogrythem
I like it, sounds like a good title for a steampunk book: "The Alcogrythem" by Neal Stephenson.
Yeah, walled garden, right. You are aware that OS X is just *BSD under the hood, right? Moreover, one can run Parallels on top of OS X. I am currently typing this in a full screen Ubuntu 14.10 session in Parallels on a Mac mini. My first impression of this little beast: why didn't I buy one years sooner. It's silent. It just works, out of the box. And so far it runs Ubuntu fantastic! And with one four finger swipe I am in the OS X desktop.
Apple out of business within 5 years? Right, that's about the same time we finally have Linux on the desktop, right?
If we look again at the estimated maximum life expectancy for prehistoric humans, which is 35 years, we can see that this does not mean that the average person living at this time died at the age of 35. Rather, it means that for every child that died in infancy, another person might have lived to be 70. The life expectancy statistic is, therefore, a deeply flawed way to think about the quality of life of our ancient ancestors.
Scientists will study your brain to learn more about your distant cousin, Man.
