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Microsoft

Microsoft's COOL 190

Posted by justin++ from the go-corba! dept.
edgy writes "It looks like [Ed: key word is "looks"] Microsoft is going to drop Visual J++ for their own proprietary l anguage which looks to be named COOL, according to this Infoworld article. Word is that COOL will not be cross-platform but will supposedly have enhancements that Java doesn't have." COM+ presents a serious threat to CORBA, and if Windows 2000 COM+ apps become popular, it will only allow MS to strengthen their hold on the desktop
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Microsoft's COOL More

Microsoft's COOL

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  • COM technologies may be create for VB applications, but they are a royal pain in the ass for any other language. Because of its heavy use if variant's, using COM in any strongly typed language becomes exceedingly complicated. In C++ or J++, you end up going through like 5 different layers of translations on both ends simply to pass a simple integer array. Until Microsoft improves their COM support for other languages, I think I'll stick to Corba.

  • So, if they ever do market it, it'll have either a different name, or they'll disclaim any expansion of the initials (as they have done with WinCE and WinNT, I believe).

    If it turns out to have a different name, I'm betting on the presence of words such as "Object" "Technology" and "Visual." Hardly a stretch, I admit.

    Or, hell, why not both? "Microsoft's COOL Visual Object Technology is an innovative and powerful new..."

  • X has nothing to do with CORBA. KDE and Gnome target X and use CORBA, but there's no more connection than that.
  • AFAIK, the Sun lawsuit is about them merging new incompatible features into Java in such a way as to make it hard for the developer to see a difference between real Java and MS extensions. Cleanly separating the extensions from the core language shouldn't be much of a problem from the developers point of view. I don't actually know anything about this, though, since I use neither Java nor Windows.
  • You must mean Spyglass. NCSA Mosaic is much freer than that.

  • GOOD! (Score:1)

    by drwiii ( 434 )
    Anything to get M$ away from Java!!

    Frame this and put it on your wall [linuxonline.org]

  • Posted by wraith-q:

    Every day I see eager beaver newbie programmers, just indoctrinated into the MS dogma of creating bad apps without a clue. They show great enthusiasm for anything new, jump onto the band wagon, blast ahead without really doing any real design, and it shows. I review code from a number of MS minded programmers and their stuff is pure crap. If it can't be done with an OCX, they throw up their hands and say it can't be done. IE. They seem intimidated by using tight code and logic to solve a problem. Maybe this will be food for thought for programmers like that eh? MS don't care about anybody except themselves. Think about it.
  • Posted by Laska:

    Sterling software has a complete software development product family called COOL [sterling.com].
  • The URL doesn't work for me. Has the site been slashdotted?
  • a) VJ++ 6 was (IMO) great in theory, but hideous in intent; surely the Great Minds at MS could have made a Sun-compliant version that included the MS-specific stuff. Isn't the Yellow Box Java both Sun-proper and NeXTStep-capable?

    b) there is no b).

    c) if you listen closely, you'll hear the sound of an 800-pound octopus shooting itself in the foot.

    d) Bull [sic] Gates calls it "The Daily".

    --

  • I told you jokers a dozen times what Linux or any OS needs, and that is reliable end user data validation, BEFORE the form gets sent to the server.

    I've seen someone post this opinion before here. Perhaps it was you.

    I think that you're confusing some very important things here, and that it's preventing you from making meaningful evaluations of technologies.

    First of all, data validation is not something that belongs in the operating-system. Rather, it is something that belongs in an application. That said, you can have a programmer write a good application for you (that puts the data validation where it should be) or you can have a programmer do a poor job writing the application where the application hurts you more than it helps. It appears that you have experience with this latter case, but that you're misplacing the blame on the language and/or operating-system.

    Make no mistake: the tools are not to blame. Blame your programmer for his shoddy workmanship.

  • COM+ could present something of a nuisance for a cross-platform world. Microsoft will obviously want to leverage COM's popularity to push it's server marketshare. How many companies have intranets using ActiveX-based components? Gee, you have to have a Windows OS to access this. Of course, they give us DCOM for UNIX via SoftwareAG just to show their "cross-platform" commitment, but how many people here want to run a proprietary piece of software donated by Microsoft? Why didn't Microsoft release it themselves? Probably because it would be too obvious they just want to suck the world into another "standard" upon which they can "innovate" new ways to screw us over and take our money.

    Now, with that in mind, how do we wrestle control of COM from their hands? I'm thinking of something along the lines of Samba. The widespread adoption of Samba has now forced Microsoft to play nice in that particular cross-platform area. If they go and break NT file-serving purposely, it's going to be a major pain for a lot of companies, who would just go with the Samba version over NT to prevent future problems.
    If we can use the popularity of Linux on the server to take part of the COM+ server market (rather than being all NT boxes), we can force the same situation as with Samba.

    I think part of the solution is a COM/CORBA bridge. However, the Transaction Server stuff has me slightly confused. It seems to me that CORBA already provides transaction services, so I don't get what the hype is about.

    We need to provide true platform independence for COM+, whether by a bridge or a Free implementation of COM+. However, this is not my area of expertise. Can someone who understands all of this stuff tell us what we need to do?
  • Most likey the same guys who said "Hey, lets make a video tape for the judge...."
  • I wish 'em luck. The poor bastards are grasping at whatever they can think of.


    I can't remember too many proprietary systems with their own custom language that were successful.
    Plan 9 and Aleph is running wild! So is MVS and the PL/_ family of languages. MS has such a good track record at engineering this kind of thing too.

  • Enterprise developers are moving in droves towards Java on the server (banks, financial institutions, manufacturing lines, etc.).. One of Microsoft's main strategies is to "GET INTO the Enterprise."

    Problem: No one wants to use Microsoft's "Java" to do server-side stuff.

    The basic thing is... COM and Microsoft Transaction Server eventually will be suitable technologies to run enterprise apps on the Windows platform (assuming Win2000 doesn't tank). Right now they're only "slightly adequate", imho. The problem with COM has always been its complexity when using it with C++.

    Enter two technologies: COM+ and Java.

    COM+ was supposed to make COM a point'n'click component model. Now the word is that "that's in COM+ v2.0", and COM+ will just be an extended COM with inheritence and some easier to use features (it supposedly will hide MIDL from the developer, which is a good thing).

    Java DID make COM much easier to use - they integrated COM with their virtual machine - which is an honest to goodness innovation... it made COM extremely easy to use. This pretty much goes in line with Microsoft's whole Java strategy: if you want to program for COM or Windows, use MS Java - otherwise, stay clear.

    The problem that remains is that Microsoft has reams of this "legacy" technology (COM), and is trying to extend it to something better (COM+) and needs a way to make it simple (Java).

    Enterprise developers are NOT (by and large) C++ hackers - they're COBOL, RPG, SmallTalk developers.
    C++ has been used in the enterprise during the late 80's to mid 90's because of the Object-Orientation craze, but has shown to be in many cases to be extremely hard to maintain because A) the language is extremely complex and B) people didn't really understand how to properly design an OO system.


    So, Microsoft can't push COM or COM+ on the enterprise with the word "C++" tacked onto it.

    And, Unfortunately, they can't extend Java to the extent they'd like to anymore because of the lawsuit.

    So, enter a new programming language. COOL.

    It starts with C++, and makes it more like Java so that it will appeal to an enterprise developer who wants to solve a PROBLEM and not twiddle bits. IT's rather hard to grasp this if you love C hacking, I think...

    ...there's nothing WRONG with C hacking nor is there anything wrong with a "high level language" like SmallTalk or Java - they're meant to solve two different sets of problems: namely a business system vs. a low-level application or system.

    So, what Microsoft's doing is genuine innovation, and indeed they've been discussing "C++ extentions" for > 12 months now. Whether we should care or not is a different story: this really (from my perspective) is nothing a Linux user should care about unless MS starts making it cross-platform (yeah, right).

    As with all things Microsoft, I'm skeptical - Java already has a huge head start in the enterprise, and with Win2000's hiccups, COOL will be a tough sell: the world still runs on Mainframes & UNIX boxes - not Windows NT boxes.
  • Yep, I've seen ILU. It's a decent implementation of CORBA.

    CORBA itself is pretty simple - the add on services are what make it realy complex. (Actually, from what I can see on the OrbIT list, actually doing the implementation of an ORB is pretty hairy.)

    The problem lies when you have to scale a distributed app up into the stratosphere... I donno how easily one can do that with CORBA. (Not saying there's anything better, well, except for TP monitors..)
  • Innovation is about monitoring change and turning change into opportunity.

    That's a wide umbrella, that includes everything from creating new/novel products to "creative imitation" to "embrace & extend" tactics.

    Microsoft sees the popularity of someone else's product, and they leverage THAT change into opportunity. It's such a simple concept, it's a wonder why so few can counter-act it.

    Most innovation by *any* company comes from areas that exploit change & opportunity: new knowledge, new markets, changing attitudes, etc. Very, very little innovation comes from the 'bright idea' that is so often exhaulted as the only "true" form of innovation.

    Of course, when someone like Microsoft plays the same game OVER, and OVER, and continues to win at it OVER and OVER, you figure that sometime they're going to drop the ball... (looks like they're starting to over the past year or so...)
  • Wouldn't it really suck if everything in the world WERE fair, and all the bad thigns that happened to us happened because we deserved them?

    No thanks.

    An author has a right to keep his software proprietary. To release it in the open is a *choice*. In a property-driven world, yes, it's going to be hard to take the moral high-ground and encourage freedom of software, but that's the sacrifice one has to take when supporting this cause.
  • Well, I'm not sure how many Linux'ers are into EJB.... I get paid for it, so I am :)

    Right now, EJB is still a "nice idea" - only three major products are shipping with it (Persistence PowerTier, Gemstone/J, and BEA WebXPress aka. Weblogic Tengah)...

    Essentially right now EJB is quite on par "in concept" with COM+MTS. The problem arises with "confusion". MTS gives you *one* way of doing things: object pooling. (conceptually. In reality, I don't think pooling is out yet... STILL..?!?) EJB gives you a number of options - i.e. conversational & stateful objects vs. stateless & pooled objects. That can be confusing to a newbie who doesn't understand how to architect these things.

    Furthermore, the transaction model for EJB is pretty new ... I'm skeptical about its scalability when not attached to a 'grade a' TP monitor like Tuxedo or CICS.

    The other big issue with this whole COM+/MTS vs. EJB thing is that I'm starting to wonder if people really care. Like, I'm working at this stuff thinking its the next big thing, but I really don't believe that line-enterprise developers UNDERSTAND distributed systems design.

    This goes in hand with the shortcomings of these specs: EJB is marketed to shield the app developer from the crap involved with building a large distributed system. Well sorry folks, you can't get away scott-free.. EJB is not mature enough yet to hide this yet. A shittily designed EJB application is MORE than possible: it's very probable, because there are few guides out there as to the tradeoffs of certain design choices.

    And what really frosts my shorts is that the MARKETERS of EJB products STILL insist that EJB will cure their productivity woes. Don't let me get started on "re-use".. if someone else tells me I'm going to be able to buy a generic "Customer" component off-the-shelf, I'm going to scream.

    My final rant: Netscape - WHERE ARE YOU GUYS??? Kiva / NAS was the best server on the market 6-8 months ago, and now all press for it has fallen off the face of the earth. Heck, the whole app server market is pretty flat because the quality of the products are so poor right now (NetDynamics? Puh-leeze).. The only capable, proven products *right now* are Netscape App Server, Persistence PowerTier and Gemstone/J. WebLogic had *ZERO* deployed Tengah customers when they were bought by BEA, according to the conference call. ZERO. Nadda. It may be a good product, but it's not proven yet. Microsoft Transaction Server is far from being proven in a large-scale situation too.... But I digress.

    THREE proven products are out there in my mind. And where, oh where is the press? I haven't seen an application server article/review/anything in a mainstream mag in a long while! It's like the coders of the world are too busy trying to make their Perl and ASP scripts scale on a MS SQL server backend. Hello? While I'm sure some people out there have figured out that ASP & Perl only go so far, I don't think it has been anywhere near the majority of people thinking of doing e-commerce or intensive web stuff.

    Actually, there WAS one piece of press recently, the E*Trade hiccups... E*Trade is a NAS+Tuxedo shop, isn't it? eek. What happened there? E*Trade's getting sued for that hiccup... I really hope, for the sake of this technology, that this blows over, because I don't want to have to read Gartner Group reports 6 months from now as to why we should all run our stuff on Windows NT + MTS because the E*Trade crash proved other servers dont' work :)


    Anyhow - I'm still rooting for you guys... but please, please, get marketing out of their slumber ... There's way too much uncertainty surrounding NAS since the AOL buyout and Sun's pledge to sell your product - umm, where does that leave NetDynamics? Just a slight conflict of interest, in my mind. (But then again, I'm just guessing, because no one's PR Dept has said anything about it. Or if they did, it wasn't loud enough 8-)

    Anyhow

    (the opinions expressed here are my own, and aren't those of my employer)
  • Ah, now I finally understand... In Microsoft PR-speak, "to innovate" is the term for what the rest of us so fondly (?) refer to as "embrace & extend". Why else would Greg Leake say that "Java is under serious constraint ... over how any vendor can innovate around it"? What he means is that Sun has prevented Microsoft from doing another Em&Ex.
    -----
  • Microsoft's attacks on Java have failed. It is an acknowledgement that Microsoft is giving up on the Java front. It is time to withdraw and to regroup.

    Visual J++ and WFC users, screw them. They are being left to be picked up by Java and Swing.

    Microsoft's fortunes in the Software Wars are declining...

  • I'm an old Unix/C guy whose been doing Java for a couple of years now. For the past several months I've been working in a serious Microsoft shop. Originally there was about fifty VBers and about three of us Java developers.

    On my current project, several of the VBers have switched to Java, are doing quite well at it, and love it. They are really excited about things like inheritance and reflection. Also they are happy that people won't tell them that they're not real programmers anymore.

    What made it all possible was J++. As much as I don't care for Microsoft, they do make real good tools. VBers are so spoiled with good tools that switching to other development environments is just that much more painful. With J++, they got to switch to a "real" language and continue working in a decent development environment.

    Believe me when I say J++ is a great development environment. I worked with Symantec Cafe for over a year and it's dog crap compared to J++. (I haven't tried JBuilder yet.) Personally, I'm most comfortable with a command line, but when it comes to GUI development, it's silly not too use one of these tools.

    If Microsoft drops J++, our current project will be seriously screwed. However, there would be one very good consequence. Every manager and programmer who didn't think twice about going with J++, will have been bitten once by Microsoft and thereful twice shy about following like sheep a company who puts profits far ahead of customers.
  • Do mercenaries have pride?
  • ...code-named COOL (C++ object oriented language), that brings COM+ support to C++ developers

    Yeah... I thought C++ was already an OO language. Hmph, silly me.

    "It makes C++ programming simpler. We like Java-the-language because it is simple -- and simpler than C++ -- but there has to be ways to make that easier," Leake said. "Can we not take the things that are wonderful about C++ and marry them with an easier model?"

    Ok, not starting a language war, there isn't anything good about C++. Second, how easy do they have to make it? You already can click a few wizard buttons and produce code in VC++ for god's sake. How much easier does it have to be?

    I really do find all of this funny. Microsoft, being unable to propriaterize (ugh) Java, is actling like the little spoiled brat that we all knew at one time or another, and going home. Unfortunately for Microsoft, by the time they get COOL off the ground, Java will be even more entrenched. And while I hate java, I do realize it's potential, and that cross platform is good.

    Just goes to show how the monopolistic giant acts when they can't control something (Oh my god! something adhering to a set of standards set by a governing body! Hell NO! we can't have that!). Here's to hoping that COOL get's laughed out of the market, and COM+ with it.

  • There already is a programming language called COOL and
    it is cobol based (COBOL object oriented language).
  • Here is the scenario as I see it.

    1 : Microsoft abandons Java and starts a Java smellalike that only thinks it's cool.

    2 : Somebody else ( Sun, Burland, IBM etc... ) ships Java development tools on the Windows platform.

    3 : Microsoft shifts the windows platform to break these other products. Unfortunately twisting it around under at least 3 massive suites like this plus apps written in them is too much of a burden.

    4 : As a result W2K ships in 2001 and is less stable than NT4.

    This is just another nail in the coffin MS has built for themselves. Windows will be practically dead by 2003. MSBSD ( The "Innovative" version of FreeBSD ) will ship in 2005. Sometime between 2002 and 2007 the stock goes down so hard that brokers start decorating the pavement.

    It will all be blamed on the DOJ and Bill will retire to an even more luxurious castle. Probably aboard ISS.
  • ...which is why MS will /never/ adopt it.


    - SeanNi
  • 'nuff said.


    - SeanNi
  • your tongue sticks to it.
  • In the thesis I wrote in 1988, I describe
    a language called FOOL (Fuzzy Object Oriented Language) and a restricted form of it, COOL
    (Concurrent Object Oriented Language).
    [Semantics of fuzzy inheritance still required some work].

  • Let me try this. I like quizzes.


    + MS DOS (undelete?, scandisk?, doublespace?)

    QDOS by SCP ripped off from CPM, licensed by MS/

    + MS SQLServer

    Originally Sybase. SQL itself developed by IBM.

    + MS LAN Manager

    Not licensed, but developed to compete with Novell using Novell tech.

    + MS Word

    An original product, AFAIK. Originally Word for Macintosh.

    + MS MediaPlayer

    D'oh! I forgot the name of the company that sold their player to MS.

    + MS IE

    Formerly known as Spyglass.

    (And here's some "almost" and some future ones)

    + MS Rose

    ??

    + MS Quicken

    MS Money.

    + MS Visio
    + MS NBC
    + MS Reserve Bank
    + MS Security Council

    MSN.GOV 1(800)WEGVRN-U


    --
  • ...how many people out there are brainwashed by Microsoft.

    If you only knew how sick and twisted their "object" model actually was- you'd not be singing it's praises.

    At it's heart, it's an okay object model. Not stellar. Not the silver bullet for programming that MS, et al. keep claiming over and over is just that.

    When the rubber meets the pavement, COM is largely painful to use without using their compilers (VB/VC++), their template and class libraries (ATL/MFC), and their wizards- even then, it's agony at times.

    If they base COM+ on the same premise as COM, it will not improve things any.

    Just so that you'll know where I am coming from:

    I have been coding Windows applications and development tools for nearly 8 years now.
    My last job was developing document imaging controls for use with VB (ActiveX controls) using Visual C++ 5.0 and ATL. At this point, I know a lot about ActiveX, COM, and OLE- more than many care to know about.

    We DO NOT WANT COM+- EVER
  • For once M$ is trying to create something rather than embrace/extend/smother like they have been with JAVA.

    For once I don't have anything negative to say about something that M$ is going to be doing.

    Am I slipping up and becoming a Microsoft schill?
  • This is why a lot of companies are going back to green screens for dedicated tasks, like customer service. People don't need to point and click for stuff like that, it's much too slow. Besides, when's the last time a terminal crashed on you?

    People run into problems when they buy technology for the sake of technology rather than actually thinking about it and choosing the most appropriate solution for a given situation.
  • Sterling Software already markets a line of COOL products: http://www.cool.sterling.com

    Maybe Redmond should rip off RoboCop and bring Microsoft System Utility eXtensions to market:

    Microsoft SUX!
  • I knew I'd seen this name before, TI has a copyright C++ development library called COOL. Hmm... I guess Microsoft will handing out some $$$ again.

    ftp://ftp.ti.com/pub/COOL.tar.Z [ti.com]
  • So what?

    Microsoft is not making a Java Compiler for Windows. There are still several companies who make Java compilers for the Windows platform (Sun, Symantec, ect.). Although Microsoft's compiler group (at least their C++ compiler group) is the only group I can look at and say that they put out decent products (I may not like the IDE or the APIs, or the system the code runs on, but the code generation is sound), their move away from Java products is unlikely to be a big deal.

    Anyways, hopefull COOL will be a replacement for VB, which be a blessing.
  • Has that ever stopped them before?
    We all remember the "internet explorer" experience.

    --T
  • a) MS is unhappy that they are being restricted by licensing terms. (no further comment)

    b) Because they cannot extend Java to the point it cannot be executed on any platform, they are now going to make MS C++ sufficiently non-standard that it cannot be compiled on any platform. (can anyone say "Russian Roulette"?)

    cb
  • Hasn't stopped them before. DNS anyone?
  • Have you taken a look at ILU? It offers bindings for a load of languages (C, C++, Java, Python, Perl, and Scheme among them), has a free-ish license (no licensing fees that I can detect), can interoperate with CORBA via IIOP (still missing DII support, but that's coming RSN), and supports a number of transport types (TCP, UDP, RPC, and even HTTP). You can translate IDL specifications into ISL (the ILU specification language) and it supports asynchronous method calls (ie, for message passing).

    I've been using it to develop a distributed application and I've never used anything simpler.

    ftp://ftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/ilu/ilu.html
  • Yeah, so let's just stick with RPG/ILE, right. This guy is an AS/400 fanatic, I can tell. Sure fella, data validation in the OS...brilliant idea. That IBM midrange philosophy is just so forward-thinking.

    "IBM operating systems may not be user friendly...but at least they are slow."

    shane
  • IT Was rumoured on these very pages (I think) a year ago that MS had a Java Killer waiting in the wings.

    Only Microsoft Seem to have forgotten that Java got where it is because it is Heterogenous.

    It is the end of the line for MS. Maybe its time we all placed our predictions for various Free Software Futures.

    i.e. Linux Dominant OS by...
    MS Laughed at by PHBs...
    MS Write Applications for Linux by...
    etc.

    Any takers.
  • You know, in car sales this is called 'bait and switch'. Get people hooked with one offer (J++) and then yank the rug out from under them and make them buy something more expensive... car dealers can go to jail for that. Why not M$?

    They will do the same to Microsoft Linux. It's coming. Believe it.
  • Microsoft? Innovate? You are kidding, right?
    Methinks you'd been reading too much of the Seattle Times, monsieur.

  • Anyone remember 'Blackbird' ? This is just step 3 in the classic Microsoft playbook.

    • Pretend it does not exist
    • Pretend it is not important
    • Pretend you have got a better, similar, proprietary, thing just around the corner.
    • Embrace and extend

    The only difference is this time Sun have forced them to backtrack.

  • Sun got the court to rewrite Microsoft's Java contract (read the contract if you don't believe me). The result is that Microsoft cannot innovate in the Java space. So what are they to do? Invent a new language, that's what.

    I've read the contract I disagree with you. In fact I cannot see how you can support Microsoft, unless you are just a troll. They both omitted parts of the platform, and added methods to java.* classes. They are both forbidden by the contract. They claim the result passed the compatibility tests. I have not seen those, so I don't know, but if it did the tests were wrong, and they were still in breach of the contract.

    You people bitch and moan about a lack of innovation from Microsoft. But when they try to innovate, you bitch and moan again. You cannot have it both ways.

    I do not care whether they innovate or not. They're historically very bad at it, anyway. The 'innovation' in this case is just a gratuitout attempt to introduce incompatible versions of a standard, and then lure people away from the real standard to the incompatible version. If you read the halloween document, they admit to doing as much in other cases.


  • And a nice GIMP image of an undead Bill Gates
    for the mascot!

  • last time i checked, COOL was already a language, Cobol Object Oriented Language. (yes, i know COBOL, no i don't like it)
  • Feh. You don't *need* reflection if your language is decently polymorphic in the first place. Having to manually convert primitive types into their class representations is ridiculous -- why can't I simply call a method on an int and have the compiler generate the appropriate code? And how about that lack of templates? Or namespace protection in interfaces? If we're not going to have MI, I'd at least like to not worry about name collisions in interfaces.
  • One class defines two interfaces, both interfaces have a method called "Object connect(Object)". No scope resolution operator exists. You lose. Yes, it's contrived, but it happened. I could NOT recompile the system (it was deployed and running), so I had to write an adaptor. Not pretty.
  • Are both using Corba. KDE use it in Koffice. I don't recall exactly where GNOME uses it.


    cheers,

    -- Elflord

  • Tried searching; COOL didn't turn up, at least when I looked.
  • Java, what a joke. They keep adding libraries upon libraries in order to make it popular. If speed is not an issue, Smalltalk is a much better language. In fact, everything Java has was stolen from Smalltalk.

  • Looks like MS are shooting themselves in the foot over the naming of COM+. If Infoworld don't understand it, what will the message be when it gets launched with Windows 2K?

    It's *not* the next generation of COM, it's the renaming of MTS and MSMQ...

    Oh well...
  • Probably because Sun can't get their act together and come up with a consistent spec that the EJB developers can agree on...

  • Why does the name look like COBOL without an B ?
    Maybe "we droped the B for Y2K ?" (and added
    the Microsoft Marketing Machine) ?
  • Well, we have interest in many platforms.
    For example, Windows ( to live ), Linux ( !!! ),
    Mac ( not you? ), etc. And we have interest in
    many languages, like C/C++, Java, and probably
    delphi? ( object pascal ? ) and maybe Objective-C.
    There are too many things to learn.

    So, I don't think it's coold to have another
    language. Instead of COOL, I think there is much
    more nicer thing.
    It's HyperTalk-like C++. You know, the HyperTalk
    is very OOP oriented, and it's very pleasing to
    write in HyperTalk. What I don't like about it is
    that it is only for Mac and slow. ( Although it's
    a little compiler-based nowadays. )
    I think it would be coold to have C++ on the base
    and on top of it, HyperTalk-like objects and C++-
    like freedom of making user-defined objects.
    In addition, how about HyperTalk like object
    management or SmallTalk-one?

    Would it be much more nicer?
    ( And probably we lost our jobs? :) Because
    programming can be much easier? Well, I really
    don't think so. Because it's C++, basically. )

    Name? Hyper-C++?
    I tried the Dylan for Windows, but it consumes
    too much memory, and not easy to learn.
    ( C++ code looks much clearer. )

    What do you think about it?
    :)
  • Mandrake 5.3.
    $1.99 at http://www.cheapbytes.com
    Life is good.
    • KDE is 2 times more stable than WIN98.. It's ready now
    That's a rather damning statement about KDE. Surely KDE can't be that bad, can it? ;-)
  • For what it's worth (.02?) I always thought that C++ is great, and that those who think it's too complicated are weenies. It's the only popular language to have a full OO implementation--that is, it supports multiple inheritance, interfaces (in the form of abstract classes), operator overloading, RTTI, and friend classes and functions. Furthermore, C++ preserves the legacy of C by allowing inline functions to avoid the overhead usually associated with OOP's myriad function calls. VB, Java, even SmallTalk, and doubtless COOL all skip these features because they're deemed too complicated, and they all stay marginal compared to C/C++'s dominance.

    There will always be RAD, and there will always be some C-like system programming language. As computers get more powerful and real programmers more expensive, companies increasingly try to pass off RAD prototypes written in prototyping languages like VB as full applications. One of the things that makes Linux go fast is that it has a commendable lack of core components written in anything but C.

    IMNSHO, C++ is the only language that does not force the programmer to sacrifice speed for the sake of OO design. Most programming languages try to prevent direct access to pointer arithmetic, which is why they're slow and inflexible.
    Done now. =)
  • roll out a new priepatory language, awesome idea! along with that I wish that icrosoft would re-write the Windows API and not release the information to anyone else without paying high royalty fees like apple so intilligently did.

    This is the best thing Microsoft could do to help linux surpass Microsoft on the desktop. by the time their new windows only CRUD programming language comes out we will have many more apps and KDE will be polished (BTW, KDE is 2 times more stable than WIN98.. It's ready now) so the decision will be trivial. I tried an expieriment last night. 5 willing victims at a local bar were willing to try a new OS. all 5 after the 20 minute demo and 20 minute self play on the laptop asked where they could buy it, they wanted it now. and they all crapped their pants when I said, It's free, doenload it off the net or buy it for $10.00 on a CD. Linux+KDE... Open source and no COOL inside. :-)
  • 1. Open standards just doesn't work. Every time they enbrace and extend something remotely open, like TCP/IP, HTML or Java, someone else's OS gets a boost.

    2. Enbrace and extends is not enough. WinSock made Windows just another node on the internet. Java made Windows just another OS, and HTML made Windows just another browser. What good does these do to Microsoft?

    3. You have to throw a code name out once every six months. Look at the evolution of Windows:
    + In the beginning was the big loop (WinProc)
    + Then came DDE and DDEML
    + Then came OLE1
    + Then came OLE2
    + Then came COM
    + Then came DCOM
    + Then came ActiveX
    + Then came COM+
    + Now it's COOL

    4. License and kill. License an outside product for a couple of years, and then kill the license. It worked every time. Can you name the original licensERs of these products:
    + MS DOS (undelete?, scandisk?, doublespace?)
    + MS SQLServer
    + MS LAN Manager
    + MS Word
    + MS MediaPlayer
    + MS IE
    (And here's some "almost" and some future ones)
    + MS Rose
    + MS Quicken
    + MS Visio
    + MS NBC
    + MS Reserve Bank
    + MS Security Council

    See the trend?

    --
    IIO, my fourth message on /.
  • This is simply a who-da-thunk it, because you would figure that Gates' and Co. would see the writing on the wall. But remember, they just turned in an extremely profitable quarter. They obviously don't see the huge mountain of people getting pissed about what is really going on. They won't see it, until it slaps them silly.

    I'm getting my favorite slapping gloves on right now too.

  • He he, if I here something like that out of context, I would swear your just describing Symantec Cafe.
    That product REALLY sucks. Nor even the guys from Redmond could have made something so crappy.
  • Sun is not better than Microsoft. Nor even a little bit.
    And besides, there software is even buggier. That's something, isn't it?
  • They're putting up a great fight in the M$ vs. World battle, but can't they at least fight fair? Us OSS guys fight by making quality software. M$ fights by restricting our rights with patents, and making EVERYTHING non-cross platform and proprietary. Damn you M$! You make everything hard for us.

    And hey, what do you know? I just happen to be in the proccess of designing what looks to be a direct competitor for COOL. I'm still working on the language standard now (it's mostly done, I just have to clean it up and do some work on defining the standard library), but when I'm done I may make an implementation of the language. It's byte-compiled like Java but... well, it's a lot better. If anyone has anything they would like to see in a language, they might want to email me now at mattcorby@exotrope.net. Of course, once the standard is ready I'll have a period where it'll be up for public viewing and poking at. Just thought I'd let you /.ers know, there is hope :)
  • one of the reasons linux has become very popular as a server is because samba makes it such a good replacement for winNTserver, even if people are running MSoffice apps on the desktop.

    the way i understand it, com+ apps may depend on win2000 server - will samba be able to serve com+ objects to com+ apps like MSoffice 2000?

    otherwise, this could be the excuse pointy haired bosses are looking for to install win2k server instead of samba/linux. i.e. upgrade all desktops to MSoffice 20000, which will then force all file servers to be running win2000 server.

    MSoffice's market share is not currently threatened by open source apps much, so this could be a way for MS to use its app monopoly to bolster it's weakening server business.

    bye bye exponential linux server growth...?
  • Yes and no, they got toasted, and then they wrote a really big check. (Well big by our standards, bill gates probally found the money in his sofa or something)
  • If I remember correctly wasn't OS/2 Warp "The totally cool way to run your computer!" I can just picture the army of 12 year olds they highered to come up with that slogan.
  • If you had read the article closely, you would know that MS is using COOL as a code name for the project. I doubt very seriously that the name would be used in a commecialized fasion.
  • First, it started with Win3.1, using proprietary type abstractions to make porting of code harder, HINSTANCE this and LRESULT that. Sure, it was compliant with C and C++, because it all came back to a header that defined them properly. Then came MFC API's, all sorts of kludges like Visual BaSuck (NOT chronologically accurate here..), and then they got their dirty little hands on Java... trying to do the same thing, except "adding functionality" meant "ensuring longevity" if you get my gist. Let's all hope that Microsoft's fear of standardization, especially with this COOL project (maybe ANSI can get in on this one.. probably not) will dig them an even earlier grave. I, for one, am sick of trying to port between standard systems and Windows.

    If it comes from man, it will fail.
    If it comes from god, It will succeed.

  • Hi folks,

    Over at Netscape they/we are moving our App Server to work in an EJB model with a more robust CORBA/COM interface (alpha ready now, June/July final beta releases). We've had a lot of buy in and development from MANY large companies wihtout this functionality. Funny that I don't see EJBs mentioned in this forum. Thoughts?

  • Hmmmm (Score:1)

    by seizer ( 16950 )
    Can't say that the whole thing really matters. Microsoft has a track history of launching "x", where x is anything marketed as "New and Innovative". All I can say is booooring.
  • > They will do the same to Microsoft Linux. It's coming. Believe it.

    BG's ego alone would never allow that. This is the man who chewed out the higher-minded managers within his own company that could see the writing on the wall (the eventual decline of Windows). "Microsoft Linux" would basically mean swallowing every ounce of pride he has. (*choke*) It would mean he has lost the war, and even more, his ideology-- "There is only Windows."
  • uh, Plan 9 was never available for noncommercial use, so its lack of mindshare is not necessarily due to its not using a well-used language
  • Duh Oh! I meant, "never available for commercial use". more specifically, you can get it for $275 but the license does not allow commercial use, e.g., using it to run a commercial web site. to use it for commerce requires striking a deal with Lucent's (was AT&T's) lawyers, which does not sound like a lot of fun unless you are a big company. hard for techies to justify learning a new OS (Plan 9 encompasses 43 megs of source code and was not designed for compatibility with Unix) if they cannot leverage that investment into paid work. with the current Plan 9 license, only professional researchers and educators can leverage the investment into paid work. in the current environment, computerists working in commercial settings seem to be essential to the success of a new OS.
  • Hmmm...

    I have (actually we have) been creating a game for next year's Indie Game Festival [indiegames.com], and we've created a small language for it called Kool. We've had it named that since Dec '98. Any chance we can get Microsoft to cease and disist it's actions because of copyright infringment? Or something like that.
  • COOL pronunced cul means "ASS" in Valencian (Spanish language talked in Valencia, the east coast)
  • First I don't agree with your points about the IDE. Anyway that might be because I've spend years using the VC++ IDE and the transition was quite easy. IMO the VJ++ IDE is the best (almost-java) IDE if you don't do AWT/SWING/Beans stuff.

    Anyway I wanted to comment about your AWT-support request. I *really* don't get why so many people
    still are loyal to Sun concerning their crappy GUI toolkits. As even Sun agrees that the old AWT toolkit was a bad joke, we're really only considering Swing here - and now look what Sun delivered! Yet another slow/flickering/redraw-problem-infested toy API! What's wrong with that company? It can't be that hard to write a GUI lib that would at least perform as good as Microsoft's(since when has Microsoft been known for writing fast code?). So once again Sun has left us with an GUI that neither looks nor performs as good as the native GUI on any platform(that I know of). Yep Sun is really doing their best to keep Java away from the desktop, while Microsoft is laughing at every new this-time-we-really-got-it-right JDK release.
  • I can't believe it's taken this long for Microsoft to just give in and write their own decent object-oriented language.

    Windows-only coders like myself (you can call us what you like) will be able to write object-oriented software using a decent, optimised, native language for our favourite platofrm provided by the only company that matters - the big MS itself.

    Your biological and cultural distinctivness will be integrated into the collective. HAHAHAHAHAH!!!!

  • Java does not produce interfaces, people produce interfaces.
    Just because you hired some loser to program something, and loser used Java, and loser programmed some crappy program that crashed, you can't blame the language.
    Get a grip.
  • WORD!

    Mac OS X Server... Learn to say it now, and be ahead of the curve.

    If the marketeers at Apple don't f*ck this one up, I think this environment will be another one of those decade long (+) over-nite success stories.
  • Actually the so called Y2K bug will happen every century. Two digit years break every 100 years. So in 100 years is 01 - 2001 or 2101? Fotunately by then computers will be running things so it will be their problem.
  • COOL is a product line from Sterling Software as can be seen at http://cool.sterling.com
  • I beg to differ. Java is going places on the desktop. For now, I will agree that java is buggy and slow. But that will change. It has gotten better in the relatively short time since 1.0.

    As a developer, I can think of nothing more beautiful than writing a program once, and having it run on Windoze, Mac, Linux, Sun, AIX, etc. Java delivers that. Just give it some time. It will not be long before everything is written in java.
  • Innovation? Is adding proprietary fuctionality to java that only works on win32 considered an innovation for a platform independent language? I do not think so.
  • Another C++'ish language that some people find "cool".

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