Totally agree. After studying C++, I was wary of trying to use the language. It seemed to me that you'll get into trouble quickly and it requires years of experience to become an expert. I would rather use Qt because it insulates you from many of the pitfalls of C++. I especially like the slots and signals paradigm. I know there are libraries that do the same thing, but if you stay within the Qt framework, you'll be a lot more productive.
I remember when Gtk 2.0 came out. IIRC, at the time, Qt seemed to be bloated and slow compared to Gtk, but Gtk had a lot of breaking changes and was more work to program with. I was unimpressed with having to constantly figure out how to update my Gentoo system when Gtk kept moving functions from one library to another, which required hacking in symlinks to point to new libraries that programs required. It was a real pain in the ass and I finally moved onto Ubuntu. Gentoo had its own probs, but Gtk didn't help.
>Don't know where to start? SMB is usually better than NFS for most cases.
Not sure why he feels SMB is better, because in my experience, NFS usually works more smoothly and is easier to setup than SMB. But then, I don't usually use windows.
Your point that entry into the Apple ecosystem isn't that difficult would be correct when they first opened up the app store, which simplified how app development for phones was done. But today, they seem to have the most friction compared to joining other stores/platforms/ecosystems.
As for the Mac mini that you talked about, that's a far cry from the 27" iMac with the i5 that you originally described.
That's pretty funny, because Microsoft has been actively courting Apple devs. They've had special events featuring Apple devs and companies associated with Apple, making the case for developing on the Windows 8 platform. Including Windows phone, which I suspect Apple and their fanbois aren't too concerned with at the moment.
I would love to get a deal like that. I just looked on craigslist, and can't find any 27" iMacs with an i5 for less than $950. In fact, I can't find anything for $250 that wasn't a piece of junk. In fact, if I could get that iMac for $250, I could turn around and resell it for $1000.
Interesting how Slash is declining while HN seems to have hit a plateau. I wonder if that means there's another site on the ascendency out there somewhere.
I guess it's not surprising that Sherlock Holmes couldn't pull a Mickey Mouse. The AC Doyle estate should've greased the wheels of commerce with some major dollars.
Intel graphics has always lagged behind Nvidia and ATI in terms of performance and efficiency for the longest time,despite having a large budget. One of the reasons that the Intel graphics has been able to make spectacular gains in performance and efficiency year over year recently is because of how bad their gpu was. You'll never see those kinds of gains from highly optimized chips.
I like how she presents important info in easy to digest graphs. One thing that I find interesting and provocative is slide 11, where she lumps mobile devices (phones,tablets,mp3 devices,cameras,appliances) into a new category of "computing cycle." Characterized by increasing integration and consisting of much larger number of devices. Useful analysis to think about.
I think he left out the fact that not all browsers in use are standards compliant, each browser handles javascript differently, and the html5 standard keeps changing which affects the javascript that you write. That seems to be a large factor.
Good article. Author takes on what so often turns out to be a overly simplistic and poorly thought out "white paper" put out by these research firms. Glad to see someone respond with more insightful points.
I am just amazed at all of the new cross platform toolkits and frameworks popping up nowadays. Seems to rival the number of new javascript libraries. The attempt to bring cross platform development to mobile is reaching a fever pitch. So many approaches, but there are still compromises or shortcomings from them all. One thing that I've noticed is that most of the newer frameworks are based on web tech and stacks. Which I guess is a good thing, or maybe not.
I think it depends on what you're interested in. The south bay (Santa Clara, Mountain View, San Jose) has a lot of hardware companies as well as some of the larger software companies (Google, Facebook, Linkedin). Palo Alto has a lot of startups and accelerators (VC) if you're into that sort of thing. San Francisco seems to have the lions share of small startups. You can hang out in numerous coffee shops with a sign stating, "I'll buy you a cup of coffee if you talk to me about the tech scene here".
Another approach would be to reach out to fellow conference attendees familiar with the area and ask them what you should be doing. Presumably, they would share the same interests as yourself. Good luck, and I hope you get much out of your visit.
I had no idea that Ubuntu made firefox an integral part of Ubuntu and that you couldn't remove it. Or other browsers wouldn't run as well as firefox on ubuntu. Geez, maybe Ubuntu really is like Microsoft! Huh, thanks for that.
Wow, you know that the times are a'changing when something like this happens. Ex-chairman Steve Ballmer used to call linux a cancer and MS had nothing but disdain for open source software. Open source really has made a difference, and Microsoft is reacting in a big way.