1,076 karma · joined May 13, 2011
With a well designed ORM, it should be possible to have the best of both worlds. One of the features that I value in Django's builtin ORM is the ability to almost seamlessly drop down to raw SQL when needed:
http://code.google.com/p/multi-language-bench/source/browse/...
No, there are no ctype libraries in there.
http://code.google.com/p/multi-language-bench/
I confess that I do not know a lot about Scala, but it looks like some of the functional aspects of the language allow for some savings in lines of code.
If I had the time right now, I doubt that it would be too difficult to shrink the python version a bit. Just taking a glance at it, I don't see a single list comprehension throughout their code. I am sure there are some other language features that could probably have been better leveraged as well.
Just out of curiosity, where did you get the 626 loc and the 297 loc from - I tried looking but I can't find it anywhere. Though that could just be a product of my lack of sleep right now.
The amusing irony was that it was mostly used to slow the computer down so you could run those programs that were written with a lower clock speed in mind.
One of these days, I am going to shove a modern computer into one of those retro 386 cases and wire up the turbo button just for fun...
Edit: And for anyone that would like a clicky keyboard, they are not extinct: http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/
I am using one of the Unicomp Customizers right now and it really is a pleasant experience. My clicky keyboard is worth every penny that it cost me.
It is worth noting that there is a difference between exploits that require physical access and those that can be conducted remotely.
Speaking just for myself, I am not certain which operating system is more or less secure, but I do not think that operating system security matters as much as user habits. I have ran Windows XP since 2001 and I have never once suffered from malware or a virus (except when I transferred a USB-stick virus onto one of my computers just to see what would happen). I know that the plural of anecdote is not data, but it is worth noting that it can and has been done.
No, it is not a dysfunctional market. People are perfectly willing to pay more for the perception of increased quality.
In terms of classification, this means that the firms in the market are in monopolistic competition.
Here is a halfway decent Wikipedia page on the topic:
http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2010/07/north-carolina-k...
I would just like to note the minuscule effect that victory had on the ultimate outcome. It seems to have merely delayed the inevitable.
Take a look at the map in that article. The problem is that unless some kind of solid, pro-municipal broadband legislation comes down from the federal level, the big telecoms are going to fight a take-no-prisoners, state-by-state war of attrition. The big ISPs are well-heeled and, unfortunately, politics is a money game. Given the present situation, I just don't see things working well for municipal broadband in the long run. There has to be a game changer of some sort.
Let's pose a hypothetical. Say she vetoes it and somehow the legislature upholds the veto. All the ISPs would have to do to get the situation back in their favor is to run some TV ads decrying big government. Ordinary people will line the streets protesting government takeover of the internet. Within weeks the whole thing would be rolled back, and we're back where we started.
It is great for us technologically savvy people to sit over here and be hopeful, but the reality is that the most effective way to fight back against this kind of legislation is to educate consumers about how things could be. The impetus is on Netflix and similar companies to get ordinary people to place more value on better bandwidth offerings. Until then, we will continue to see these types of setbacks.
She's a political animal. In the calculus of politics, what doesn't help you hurts you.
Picking a fight over this would make her a hero to hacker types, but it could possibly burn bridges elsewhere. Unfortunately, media companies punch above their weight in this country.
From a purely self-interested perspective, she made the savvy choice. Stating her disapproval without being too belligerent.
Call it cynicism or call it realism - this is the way these things tend to happen.
"It's cowardice to let the bill pass while talking about how bad it is. Veto the damn thing."
I'm curious to know, since when, in recent times, has bravery been the hallmark of a politician? Almost by definition, the political class tends to be remarkably risk-averse.
She took the most politically savvy position possible. It wouldn't have made any sense to lose political capital on a battle that was already lost.
"$12,000 profit per month after taxes is not livable in the US, and probably not Canada."
It seems to me that $12,000 per month is an eminently livable wage. Did you mean to write $12,000 per year there instead of $12,000 per month?
(Just a quick HN related tip. Something that helps me is to review a post carefully after I've posted it. It has helped me to catch myself saying some strange things a few times.)
In reference to your original post, Octopart is currently getting half a million unique visitors per month - and still growing. Given that they have low overhead, it is reasonable to believe that they are probably profitable at this point (including hefty owner's salaries).
I am currently in the process of bootstrapping a company in a similar way to the process that they took. I am not doing it because I was "sold someone else's dream of \"starting a company is the best thing in the world to do\"".
I saw a potential market opportunity (and something that I would enjoy working on) and I took action to meet what I saw as a need. Some people are just pre-programmed to want to own their own business. I know that it is something that I have been trying to do for a little over a decade.
I've had a few rough starts and a few no starts, but then that is how the learning process often goes. I realize that I would probably have been further ahead at this point financially if I had just taken a "normal job", but how much would that financial "security" have been worth with that constant feeling nagging me in the back of my head that I should have started my own business.
When I was in high school, I could pull an all nighter with ease to take care of an assignment (or to finish a Legend of Zelda game in one straight playing session).
Now, in grad school, I needed to pull an all nighter recently and found that I just couldn't do it anymore. I hadn't pulled an all nighter in years and it just seemed to be vastly harder than it used to be.
It is too bad the study didn't attempt to see how much sleep was necessary to recover. Would have been nice to know how long the residual effects from decreased sleep lasts. It is now a full week since the end of my semester and I still feel abnormally tired.
He doesn't pretend to have all of the answers but rather invites the reader to embark on a thought exercise. Ignoring the question of comparing languages, that is an excellent example of how to write concerning this type of topic.
On comparing languages, I have to say that comparing languages based on power does make sense - with power defined as programmer productivity. From this perspective, I can understand your view on Java.
But is it the language itself that is to blame or the spaghetti code that all too often results from inexperienced users? I recall that the JRuby team has done some interesting things within the limitations of the Java language.
Note: To those who down-voted the original comment, I did not think that the down-voting is the most optimum solution for when you have a different perspective on an issue. Wouldn't it be better for everyone to chime into the discussion and increase everyone's knowledge with your perspective on the issue? This type of thing is why I have to ignore votes and just try to learn.
You know what. It's a funny thing, but as I was typing my response to your original post, I actually said this exact same thing to myself, and I started to think. It would be incredible if there was some non-emotional, non-touchy-feely way to get at the value of one language vs another. But then programming language choice just seems to be an inherently "feel" based decision...
"We should clean up the table from the psychological aspects of the matter and look at what's left: that's how powerful and how clever a language can be in the hands of a good developer."
This is one of the things that I thought of, but then there are so many demonstrations of people using all kinds of programming languages to do things that are incredibly clever and powerful.
Sometimes I like to just go through open source projects written in programming languages I am not extremely familiar with. I just want to get a taste of some of the myriad of programming styles and techniques that are out there. The different ways of looking at the same problem.
Even if I disagree with the method used, it is always eye-opening to see other ways of doing things - even some that may be vastly different from anything that I have ever seen before (my first time looking at Haskell comes to mind). I like to understand how and why different developers choose the routes that they choose.
I don't know, but to me it seems that, in a way, it is good that there is no emotionless method for rating languages. To declare one language as being definitively better than all others seems to me that it would be a tremendous loss. There is some value, I think, in having a diversity of "good" languages just for its own sake.
As to the simplicity of a language, well, to some people simplicity in a programming language is a beautiful thing, but then, the problem is that what constitutes simple is also a thing that varies from developer to developer. Perhaps the diversity of languages is a natural development from the diversity of programmers?
I think about Ruby. You know, when Matz describes why he created the language, he says that he wanted to create something that felt fun to develop in - fun for him. The fact that other people just happened to like Ruby was an unintended side effect.
I think that most people create a programming language with a similar type of outlook. They, either purposefully or subconsciously, try to build it to achieve a certain "feel". Perhaps it is this "feel" that makes a good developer powerful and clever with a language.
"for reasons I don't understand very well, a simple \"Hello world\" application written for JVM can take seconds to load and execute."
Heh heh, I have no comments on that.
"I know what mine are - but it's subjective."
Well, see... That's the thing... I spoke vaguely because the benefits themselves are ambiguous, subjective. They are hard to quantify because their intrinsic value varies based on who you ask.
However, just because they are not easily quantifiable does not mean that they have no value. You are right. It is easy for me to sit over here and criticize them for not discussing something that was probably outside the scope of their article.
With that said though, it may be possible - one day - for someone to figure out some way of approximating these things (no landlords, lower fixed monthly costs, more control over your own property) and giving them some type of monetary value.
One thing that could be done is to look at the difference between rent and ownership prices and build an econometric model in an attempt to tease some numbers out of it. Maybe someone has already tried it, but I am not certain. There would be some selection bias though - the kind of people that own homes are probably not exactly the same as those that rent apartments. I'm not sure how to deal with that...
Just something to think about, I have taken some classes in Urban economics and all of these professors talk about how incredibly stupid it is to own a house. Then, over the course of the semester, I would realize that they owned houses myself. When I ask them why, none of them has a decent answer.
Maybe the answer is something really sort-of fuzzy. It seems to me that people tend to buy a house when they want to lay down "roots" in a place, but then that wouldn't explain why so many people just rent for a long time despite not needing the mobility.
There are probably hundreds of factors that creep into the decision to own vs to rent. I guess being aware of this is why I feel repulsed at articles claiming to compare the two but not even trying to factor in the preference-related factors and how they cloud this type of analysis.
Disclaimer: I am an economist-in-training at this point in time. My thesis involves an application of a hedonic pricing model. Too much work with hedonics and you may become delirious - believing that everything can be quantified if you just tinker with the model long enough...
Regardless of the contention, the community at Economist.com maintains a relatively civil atmosphere. I have always been perplexed by this - especially because you can only upvote, no downvoting is in (yet).
The funny thing is that back in the day (when I first started commenting over there) they did not have any type of voting and it could get bad sometimes. Users begged for voting and we got it, now things are pretty nifty for all commenters.
Maybe it is because a different group of users frequents the Economist. In which case, the answer to improving your comments is to try to improve your sites culture?
It seems like a simple comment-voting system will answer the majority of the concerns.
Well, one contributing factor is that a lot of universities now have a heavily Java based curriculum (turning their CS programs into vocational schools, but I digress).
Another contributing factor is that Java has managed to carve itself a niche in which it is used extensively ("enterprise" applications - with all of the wonderful ambiguity that the word "enterprise" carries nowadays).
One more thing in Java's favor is just simple momentum. There are a lot of Java libraries that just plain work (and some work extremely well). There are a lot of applications on the corporate side that use Java.
Regardless of whether you or I like the language or not, Java has apparently proven itself useful to a broad swathe of people. It may not be an exciting language, but then neither is Cobol and it still exists as well (and puts food on quite a few tables).
Then there is the venerable JVM, which is actually an amazing piece of software engineering that has enabled the development of a wave of innovative new languages. Of course, one of the features of many of these new languages is the ability to drop down into Java for speed (now before anyone starts sneering, Java is actually not doing to bad on that front right now).
"Does it make a good language? Absolutely not."
Perhaps not in your opinion, but their are others who are quite fond of it. That's the problem with these type of pronouncements. What makes a "good language" varies from person to person.
Disclaimer: I have used Java for some small projects in the past - I may be somewhat biased.
Edit: Embarrassing grammatical flaws.
To me, by not discussing the long-term benefits of home ownership they are looking at the issue all wrong. Their analysis is focused only on the short to medium term and the valuation of the house itself.
They are discussing homes in a similar way to how one would look at any investment - ignoring that a home should be considered differently because of the non-monetary values that come along with home ownership.
Of course, a home is an investment and it can provide capital gains, but there are other, not easily quantifiable, benefits to home ownership that make it attractive. To ignore these benefits is to miss the picture completely.
If I need to something higher level there are plenty of choices of that already, and C is a great language for extending applications done in a higher level language.
I think that the author has some good points. but I think both languages have the places where they excel.
To say that one is "vastly superior" to the other is a mistake. If C++ was really "vastly superior" to C then why are so many people still using C and using it productively?
I think that the difference between us and the people that they are referring to in that article is that we consider a house to be a place to live and not merely a medium-term investment.
I think that the thing that really lead to the housing market bust was that a ton of people started buying houses just to sit on them for a few years and then sell for a profit. The speculation fed on itself until it became unsustainable, then it fell apart. It is just a shame that this had an impact on regular long-term homeowners as well.
So, yeah, if you're dumb enough then so am I.
Bigger ticket items, by definition, had to have strong political allies to get put into place, so they will be the last things to get trimmed - if at all.
Maybe I'm just naive, but everyone always talks about a free market, but one of the most important features of a free market is ease of entry. If software entrepreneurs have to purchase patent liability insurance then this is an artificial barrier to entry. Yet another thing that you have to consider in the course of running your online business.
Every once in a while I use Google patents to browse software patents. What I see is disheartening. There are literally patents on almost anything you can do with a web application.
Even worse, most of the companies behind these patents are not technology companies but law firms with vast portfolios of multiple, redundant patents covering a broad array of topics. They bide their time - waiting for when some unsuspecting web company turns a profit. Then they swoop in to take their cut. I find this to be disgusting. Tech firms get stomped and lawyers get very, very rich.
The worst part of it is that there doesn't seem to be any solution. It seems as though insurance of some kind to protect against patent lawsuits will eventually be a mandatory requirement for any tech startup.
The problem with entrepreneurs purchasing insurance against frivolous patent lawsuits is that it will encourage the proliferation of these lawsuits even more. If everyone is insured then when they are sued they may be more likely to settle - rewarding the patent holders.
Over time the number of lawsuits would increase and so to would the premiums on purchasing this patent liability insurance. Eventually, the cost would become prohibitive for first time entrepreneurs and they would be prevented from being able to enter into the market.
Think about it. People keep talking about how they are looking for the next Google. As software patents pile up in the hands of unscrupulous patent trolls, it becomes less and less likely that there will ever be such a thing.
I don't mean to hyperventilate, but software patents sometimes cause me to lose sleep at night. Getting hammered by a patent infringement lawsuit is my personal worst nightmare. Is anyone with teeth doing anything to fight the patent trolls???
http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=nA2AAAAAEBAJ&dq=7...
If this is the one, then this is an unbelievably broad patent. I encourage everyone to at least skim through this thing, it is incredible that this can constitutes a valid patent.
The way that patent system in this country works for software patents is wrong, period. If it is this easy for someone to get sued then it should be made easier to fight back against these type of lawsuits.
At least doctors can get medical malpractice insurance to protect against the liability of losing a frivolous lawsuit. Software developers are on their own.
Generally, this is true, but no one is doubting MSFT's profitability right now, the doubts are with regards to MSFT's future profitability.
"The flaw with speculating about the future is that anything that's certain will be priced into the stock immediately."
Only in the very short term and with short-term information that is both publicly available to all investors and verifiably true - most information does not meet these criteria. The longer you move out on your time horizon the more uncertainty will impact the market price.
There is an enormous amount of literature out there with relation to determining the future price movements of volatile assets in markets with asymmetrical information (not everyone gets all news at the same time). You should google the "efficient-market hypothesis" as well as recent efforts to test the assumptions that it relies on. (Thanks to the fall-out that occurred immediately after the 2008 market bust there has been a lot of soul-searching in the investment management industry.)
"A lot of people think they're being prudent just because they're investing with a \"long-term perspective\". That doesn't get you anything in and of itself - I can buy a car and hold onto it forever but it'll never appreciate (well, until it becomes an antique)."
They don't have to think that they are being prudent - there is evidence to demonstrate the prudence of this strategy. There is a large body of research out there that has demonstrated that long-term investment via index funds with low management fee overhead is a solid, profitable investment strategy.
"But that just makes it more important that you understand why you've chosen to hold onto this stock for so long. And I don't think speculation about the future is a good basis for that decision."
MSFT has underperformed over the past 5 and 10 year horizons. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results, but I have found it to be a worthwhile indicator to pay attention to.
I was a portfolio manager for about 3 years (before I decided to jump ship and try a startup). When building a portfolio for someone, one of the most important questions concerns the time horizon of the investment. A portfolio's risk profile should be appropriate for the investor. The only way to determine this is to look at the past performance, past volatility, and future prospects of any potential portfolio asset.
In the long-term everything is uncertain - I agree with you on this. However, where we disagree is that you seem to believe that all future events have an equivalent uncertainty, but this is demonstrably false.
There is a implicit probability associated with all future events, and these probabilities, in the aggregate, will impact today's share price. Some events are more probable than others. For a subtle demonstration of this, you could easily look at the performance of some of the larger pharmaceutical companies. As they get closer and closer to the expiration of some of their key money-making patents the volatility of the companies notably increases.
There is a considerable amount of truth to what you are saying, but I would, personally, hesitate to invest in an individual company without incorporating some type of business risk analysis into my decision.
Edit: Minor grammatical flaws. I apologize for any that remain, this was typed in a hurry.
Why invest in Microsoft when you could invest in Exxon Mobile, Johnson & Johnson, The Coca-Cola Company, Novartis - all companies with better long term growth rates and beefy dividends.
Look, I am not trying to be discouraging, but I find it grating how little progress Microsoft has been able to make despite its huge market advantages.
Maybe the question is one of perspective. I tend to constantly think in terms of long-term investments. If you are investing because you intend to cash in on an upcoming bounce in the price (rather than holding on for the long term) then that is actually a sound strategy - I wish you luck in timing the bounce.
It's the long-term perspective that I am mostly referring to. That is the reason for the speculating about the future.
Disclaimer: I own none of the shares mentioned above - as a matter of fact I currently own no shares of anything.
I used to read books, but then college started. Now the only books I read are textbooks. A tragedy.
MSFT's current P/E ratio is about 10x. Just looking at that number right there, most people would conclude that MSFT was a great value play. In my personal opinion it is indeed a great value play - but not so long as Ballmer is still calling the shots.
If market prices were solely set based on income then you would be right; the price would eventually rise regardless of whether Ballmer remained at the helm or not. However, market prices are more complex than this. They also incorporate expectations for the future. It is here where MSFT's current problem is.
If you look at the components of MSFT's cash flow their major income sources are the Windows Operating System and the MS Office Suite. It is unbelievable that either revenue source will suddenly evaporate.
The problem is that both of MSFT's core business functions are under pressure. This pressure is coming from the decreasing dominance of the PC as the digital platform of choice and the increasing prevalence of Internet-based solutions to problems that were previously solved by offline software packages.
While MSFT is currently conducting expansions into a large array of industries, it is unlikely to dominate these industries to the same degree that it currently dominates the desktop sphere. In all of the industries where MSFT is trying to expand its footprint it faces vigorous competition from fairly formidable competitors. Even in its core industries, challenges are appearing on the horizon. Here's just a really quick summary:
1. Video Gaming - Nintendo, Sony, Apple? (Perhaps for "casual" gamers only, but I am not well versed enough to know how serious of a contender Apple is as of yet)
2. Tablets/Mobile - Google, Apple, HP
3. Search/Advertising - Google (Look, this is a big enough fish, I don't even need to name anything else)
4. Operating Systems - Google (ChromOS in the distant? future, Android everywhere, tablets eating market share), Apple (tablet popularity may erode Windows market share)
5. Server & Server Tools - ORCL, Linux, IBM, etc, etc, etc
6. Microsoft Office - Nothing serious yet, but GOOG is salivating at a chance to chip away at this
Market prices incorporate expectations for future growth as well as performance relative to peers. In the near term Microsoft is making buckets and buckets of solid cash. In the medium term, there are threats on the horizon that are looming large. In the long term, there is a great deal of uncertainty and this uncertainty is not made any better by strange moves like acquiring Skype for $8.5 billion.
I have heard some people say that acquiring Skype was a defensive move. Look, defensive moves like that are the last ditch strategy of someone that knows they are losing. There were a billion strategies that could have been taken that would have yielded a better strategic position.
What Microsoft needs is a visionary leader that can turn its buckets of cash into something that can carve out a substantial, permanent, and secure foothold on one of the fronts that they are fighting. That sounds cliche, but it is what they really need right now.
Microsoft is a fantastic company with an amazing amount of talent in it. I actually believe that it has some incredible earnings potential, but unlocking this potential will take bold, aggressive moves - not expensive defensive posturing.
It is not my intention to bash Microsoft. I have a lot of respect for the company. However, something obviously needs to change in response to the new challenges that they are facing. The status quo is no longer good enough.
Sources:
Edgar online for the year 2000 10-Q filing, yahoo finance for price in 2000, http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/Microsoft-Q3-2011-... for revenue break down.
I apologize in advance for any formatting strangeness in this post. In my defense - I am new here, and it is 1:31 am.
Apple and Google were in their heydays during this time period. If anyone is interested in seeing a really interesting comparison then go to finance.google.com and do the following:
1. Look up MSFT
2. Click "All" for your zoom option, this should give you from 1986 to present
3. Add GOOG and AAPL using the compare box
Now look at the chart. MSFT is up 25,019.04% since it was publicly listed. AAPL is up 11102.07% since it was publicly listed. GOOG is up 394% since it was publicly listed.
If we want to truly assess Ballmer's performance as a CEO using stock performance as a metric then I strongly suggest we look at the past ten and five years of performance of Microsoft and compare it to similar tech companies.
Offhand, I think that IBM and Oracle make suitable comparison points. Looking at the past ten years of performance, we can see that MSFT is down about 27%, while IBM is up 49% and ORCL is up 109%. Now we can more clearly see that Ballmer has more than likely missed some opportunities along the way. When you narrow to the last five years, the picture doesn't change.
I agree with the author of the blog piece - Ballmer has proven to be a mediocre CEO of Microsoft. However, we need to make sensible comparisons to get the point across.
Frankly, I don't understand how MSFT could sit on 40 billion dollars in cash and short term investments without increasing its dividend to something more in line with what one should expect from a mature cash-rich business.
Increasing shareholder value should be the goal of all publicly listed companies. Purchasing Skype for $8.5 Billion dollars flies straight into the face of this - it is a crazy move. Any shareholders that are not screaming about this should wake and smell the sinking share price.
Edited: Formatting in the step-by-step portion of this post was messed up initially...
With that said, it seems that it would be difficult to call this activity a "bubble". "Bubble" in the popular nomenclature are typically used to refer to developments that can have widespread consequences when they "pop" (Re: the housing bubble, the credit derivative swap bubble, etc, etc).
There has been a lot of private investment activity in the tech world recently, but I think that it would be fear mongering to refer to this activity as a bubble. The Internet in general (and the web specifically) is still a relatively recent development. It makes sense that you will see a lot of investment activity in this area.
This same type of thing tends to happen whenever a major technological advancement spurns rapid innovation (Re: the gilded age). It is merely capitalism at work - not necessarily a bubble.
First, PHP is a great language. It definitely has its strengths. It was the second language that I ever used to create web sites (right after Perl).
With that said, the number of people using something does not inherently make it superior to all of the other choices. PHP, Python, Ruby, etc all have their proponents and they all have their valid use cases. Which one someone chooses to use is largely a matter of personal preference.
Drupal is a great package, but I found it to be cumbersome and unwieldy for my purposes, which is why I started fiddling around with Django. Choices are good - HipHop, Wordpress, etc do not innovate in a vacuum.
Innovation is facilitated by maintaining an open mind and looking to offer improvements and variations on existing solutions. There is no war between the languages. Everyone can learn from each other - and they often do.
Now, as to maturity. Both PHP and Ruby have been around since roughly 1995. (People sometimes mistakenly believe that Ruby did not exist until Ruby on Rails, but it was around for quite a bit of time before that.) Python has actually been around (publicly) since 1991. All three languages are mature by any definition of that word.
As to broadness, I think that it is worth noting that Python has really come into its own in the area of scientific and mathematic applications. I have always found Ruby to be an amazing general purpose text processing and scripting language (in addition to web programming). PHP, on the other hand, I have not actually seen in extremely heavy usage outside of the web environment. I would be pleased to know of any though, but you must admit that the usage of PHP in developing web sites fairly drowns out its usage in more general cases.
As to community size, I believe that quality not quantity is what counts. Both Python and Ruby have a lot of bright people working on a lot of really great projects. Of course, PHP does as well, but there is no reason to be outright dismissive of alternatives (you know, Perl is actually pretty neat too, but I rarely use it nowadays).
Additionally, where do you have numbers to support your assertion that Ruby is in decline? That is a rather strong statement - you should have numbers to back it up, and TIOBE is not a very good source of data for this.