Rakesh, I think Kevin makes a valid point here. Many of us here are proponents of open source software, and open source rightfully gets a lot of press. But we must admit that OSS as a movement has not been the strongest innovator as compared with the for-profit sector. And in terms of writing a profitable piece of software, it's like target shooting -- you have to lead with your aim. This is in part why OSS has a hard time competing in terms of ground-breaking innovative solutions: you have to gamble significant resources on developing for platforms that either don't exist at all or aren't available on the consumer market. Anyone can go out and start hacking yet another Firefox add-on that does something cute with their Gmail account, but it's an entirely different thing to be working on facial recognition image search or a brand new embedded architecture in anticipation of new hardware and connectivity capabilities and characteristics. We got a little glimpse of that when Android was available for a year as an open source emulator without any hardware for anyone to tinker with. But most of the serious stuff from that time came out of commercial outfits, who don't write a ton of blogs or if they do, they might do so after their product launch, not before.
So I think it's important to not underestimate the importance of hardware innovation and how it continues transforming our world (both as developers and consumers) even today. Alexey ________________________________ From: Rakesh <rakesh.mailgro...@gmail.com> To: javaposse@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, January 8, 2011 9:11:38 AM Subject: Re: [The Java Posse] For loop is harmful Kevin, yet again you ever so subtly answer back by basically saying that I am a thicko, an enemy of progress and if I had my way, we would be back in the dark ages burning witches. Its why I stopped participating in these forums much. Not much room for discussion of the facts. I put forward a theory that most applications built by developers do not require ever-increasing performance and as a consequence, ditching the for loop seemed silly. R On 8 January 2011 13:43, Kevin Wright <kev.lee.wri...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 8 January 2011 13:24, Rakesh <rakesh.mailgro...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> the processor industry needs to keep moving forward so we buy their >> products, regardless of whether we need this speed or not. This >> "problem" of speed leveling off was not everyone's problem, but its >> marketed as if it was. >> >> As someone has already pointed out, very few apps need increasing >> levels of performance and not using a traditional For loop is plainly >> ridiculous - its simple and GOOD ENOUGH. >> >> My argument is the apps that would benefit most are specialist areas >> anyway. The large proportion of apps built (think desktop apps and >> inhouse webapps) are not constrained by speed at all anyway. >> >> So if 20% of apps need to take advantage of increasing performance by, >> for example, ditching a traditional for loop, why should the 80% >> change too and introduce a magnitude of complexity that isn't >> required? >> > > Which is all well and good, but I'm fairly sure there were people making > similar claims back in the day of the green-screen terminal. > > Increasing resolutions, 3d interfaces, Kinect-style gesture recognition, > increasing AI and context-aware behaviour, better compression with higher > CPU demand, stronger cryptography, data-mining of ever more home photos and > videos, etc, etc... > The way we interact with computers nowadays is driving the demand for > ever-smarter software (not necessarily feature-creep either). This ain't > just 20% of the market, it's all of it. > The demand for less buggy software is also *always* present, and a > functional style just leads to more inherently testable code - so it's > basically a Good Thing™ even if concurrency wasn't important to you. > > I also object to the idea that a list comprehension (for example) is more > complex than an imperative loop, let alone a whole order of magnitude more > complex! It's simply a different way to thing about it. If anything, using > a declarative approach will help to simplify things, "pure" SQL vs cursors > is an example of this simplification. > >> >> Rakesh >> >> On 7 January 2011 20:05, Kevin Wright <kev.lee.wri...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > This may be relevant: http://www.infoq.com/interviews/wampler-scala >> > >> > On 7 Jan 2011 18:06, "Russel Winder" <rus...@russel.org.uk> wrote: >> >> On Fri, 2011-01-07 at 17:44 +0000, Kevin Wright wrote: >> >> [ . . . ] >> >>> >> >>> No way is that happening, parallel arrays were the primary driver for >> >>> closures in java. Until we get closures, all bets are off... >> >> >> >> ParallelDoubleArray in extra166y works fine for me with anonymous >> >> classes. It being Java, it's verbose and ugly, but it works -- no need >> >> to wait for closures at all. >> >> >> >> I agree it would be better to have closures than not have them. >> >> >> >> Of course the JVM is not Java, which is why GPars, Scalaz, and Clojure >> >> already have parallel map so that applications targeting the JVM can >> >> have all these nice parallelism goodies today -- without having to wait >> >> for the (potentially mythical :-) Java 7. >> >> >> >> -- >> >> Russel. >> >> >> >> >> >> >>============================================================================= >> >> Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:russel.win...@ekiga.net >> >> 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: rus...@russel.org.uk >> >> London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder >> > >> > -- >> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> > Groups >> > "The Java Posse" group. >> > To post to this group, send email to javapo...@googlegroups.com. >> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> > javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> > For more options, visit this group at >> > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. >> > >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "The Java Posse" group. >> To post to this group, send email to javapo...@googlegroups.com. >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. >> > > > > -- > Kevin Wright > > gtalk / msn : kev.lee.wri...@gmail.com > mail: kevin.wri...@scalatechnology.com > vibe / skype: kev.lee.wright > twitter: @thecoda > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to javapo...@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javapo...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javapo...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
