So . . . . you're using TIOBE for your language "popularity" statistics and
you couldn't back up *any* of your even more egregious operating system
assertions.
Do you truly believe that search engine hits is proportional to the use of a
language or is it just that the valid methods didn't you give the results
that you wanted?
Do you have *any* viable facts to back up your silly operating system
assertions?
I didn't think so. The numbers were just too outrageous . . . .
----- Original Message -----
From: "J. Andrew Rogers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <agi@v2.listbox.com>
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2008 5:14 PM
Subject: **SPAM** Re: [agi] More Info Please
On May 26, 2008, at 12:19 PM, Mark Waser wrote:
I live in Northern Virginia, near Washington, DC.
That pretty much explains it then, as DC is another Windows stronghold in
my experience. Some areas, like Seattle and Boston, seem to be mixed
markets.
Where do you get your statistics? What exactly are you measuring?
It is invisible to most people, but Unix server environments remain the
dominant server environment on the Internet generally (and I use "Unix"
to include Linux). Not surprisingly, this means there are a lot of people
that develop for that target.
While I am aware that Silicon Valley takes this to a relative extreme,
Windows is almost non-existent as a development target there. Part of
the reason is that most servers are still Unix-like systems, and servers
or the web interface are the primary development targets in Silicon
Valley. It is kind of hard to over-emphasize how non-existent Windows is
as a server target in Silicon Valley.
I honestly do not know anyone at any company in Silicon Valley who is
developing for Windows server targets. No one. It does not even cross
anyone's mind to even consider it as a possibility. And client targets
are web-related platforms. The killer hook of MacOS X as a developer
platform is that it works very well as a Unix desktop and has a slick IDE
that directly supports all the major languages Unix server development is
done in. Write, build, test on MacOS, push it to Linux servers and it
works just fine. MacOS X is useless for Windows development, but it is a
very slick development environment for the Unix tool chain, even if you
are not using MacOS X as a target. Unix development on Windows is pretty
bad; it is not like Visual Studio really supports UNIX server targets.
If you're looking solely at servers like Google's which require
extremely high performance for very specific, very tailored purposes,
you are correct.
Google is one company. Silicon Valley has thousands of tech companies.
They almost all use Unix on the server, whether the task is mundane or
complex and esoteric. Your web browser or desktop client does not care
that the back-end is Unix, and Unix/Linux has a lot of advanced features
out-of-the-box that make nice servers.
If you're looking at more generic business-type work, you're just plain
wrong. And, realistically, AGI development is *MUCH* closer to the
business-type work than the high-performance work.
Non sequitur. I'm not entirely sure what you are assuming and/or
asserting here.
A lot of other business in Europe specifically excludes *nux. It's a
cultural difference in contracting. I'm starting to distrust your
claims when you come up with BS like this that I know is wrong from my
own experience. How much European contracting have you done? I worked
with the World Bank for a number of years and then was spun off with the
Global Development Gateway. Do you really want to argue European
contracting?
You are talking about your experience with European contracting back then
(when I was not), I am talking about contracting with both the EU and UN
*right now*.
Your original quote was about Mac notebooks at conferences -- not
development systems. I know numerous people who use their Mac notebooks
as a gateway to their non-Mac development machines. It's very common
here for the reasons I stated previously.
These were all technical conferences; the political and policy functions
I attend are dominated by Windows laptops. Mac notebooks *are* the
development systems. I do what everyone else does: plug their Mac laptop
into a large external monitor. Not surprisingly, developers tend to buy
the MacOS platform for its development environment, which is quite good
if you have a Unix target.
If Windows is the development target, you would be very poorly served
with a Mac -- it would be a lousy development environment. The popularity
in the software development community is utilitarian.
To use Silicon Valley as an example, C/C++, Java, and Python will give
you about 90% coverage of the developer pool. The .NET languages are
in the residue.
OK. Show me your statistics. I have *NEVER* seen statistics anywhere
like what you're quoting. One of us is *very* misinformed or you're
quoting a very odd little subset that has no relevance to the real
world.
Unix-like environments are a major portion of the server market,
particularly on the Internet -- I did not realize this was controversial.
There are a limited number of choices for development choices for Unix
that are practical. C/C++ for systems level work and Java for web app
environments are obvious choices. Perl used to be the dominant
high-level language choice back in the 1990s in Silicon Valley but was
slowly supplanted by Python, since the latter is extremely productive,
maintainable, and scales up well. There are still a few parts of the US
where Perl is going strong, but not in the Valley.
The TIOBE programming language popularity index shows Java in the #1 spot
followed by C in #2. Even Python edges out C#, which comes in at #8. A
lot of big companies in Silicon Valley use the three languages mentioned
above as their official development languages, so it is not surprising
that they are primary choices in Silicon Valley. The important languages
I glossed over were actually things like PHP and Ruby, neither of which
are C#.
I have yet to see anyone attempt to deny my claim about the relative
development speed on .Net vs. anything else.
Supposed "development speed" does not do you much good without sufficient
developers, even if I allowed that it were true. As a practical matter if
you can specify a problem I can always find a platform that has better
development speed than .NET -- this is really quite irrelevant and other
things are more important in the big picture.
The language/environment is a secondary concern to the developer pool
because you could develop this project in *any* language. The
difference in overhead costs intrinsic to the environment are nominal.
I don't like Java myself, but I think a better argument can be made
for it *in this instance* relative to .NET because language features
are not that important at the end of the day. If you were doing a
closed shop project then .NET would be very arguably a superior choice.
So, why do you believe that all these developers are staying away from
the superior choice? Why aren't the smarter ones defecting? Are you
sure that they aren't? Are you sure you want that huge developer pool
of those who aren't smart enough to defect?
Most of your arguments are based on the assumption that most of these
developers are Windows developers who just happen to be stuck working on
Java. Often they are Unix developers who happen to be stuck working on
Java. If they stopped using Java, .NET would not be their logical next
choice.
There are practical economic reasons Java is used so much, most notably
its ubiquity and the fact that it works well on Unix. There is a trend
moving away from Java for some web apps, but it is toward languages like
Python, Ruby, and PHP, which also run on Unix very well.
If you hate Java, there are other environments with a better feature
Where did *that* come from. I don't hate Java. It's just seriously
sub-optimal so I don't waste my time with it.
*shrug* Maybe I was just projecting my distaste for Java. I don't like
it, but I understand the rationale behind using it.
I dunno, the obsession with a very particular and narrow platform
systems misplaced and inappropriate for a project like this. The goal
is (hopefully) *not* to select a platform you like and then
rationalize every other decision around that.
You mean like choosing the platform solely based upon the size of your
developer pool and ignoring what *you* acknowledge as superior features
on another platform?
You agree with all of my technical reasons and then accuse me of
rationalization?
I agree with your technical arguments re: Java versus .NET in the
abstract. My point is that these are minor factors in the overall
platform decision.
J. Andrew Rogers
-------------------------------------------
agi
Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now
RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/
Modify Your Subscription:
http://www.listbox.com/member/?&;
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
-------------------------------------------
agi
Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now
RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/
Modify Your Subscription:
http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=103754539-40ed26
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
