Deploy: Ruby things. GEMs work better than EGGs, in part because there are fewer of them. Ruby makes OO easier.
Maintain: Python things. There are so many EGGs! If you need a new package for something or other -- the JSON parser isn't fast enough or something -- someone has made an alternative already. Performance matters for maintenance -- scalable deployment is still not easy, or cheap -- and it helps that Python has a fast core and syntactic shortcuts to things like generators (memory efficient) and list comprehensions (CPU efficient).
One could also develop a separate kernel API for version control. Filesystems without version control would just have null operations in this API, while filesystems with version control would root around in their database for the change information.
It does not speak well of an author's arguments when they rely on generalities -- "you don't know everything" and "programmers can't communicate". As for Leibniz, Euclid and Newton -- Gauss was by all accounts more productive, more important, more fundamental than any of those guys; and a famously poor communicator.
The smooth, poorly reasoned prose of this article bears the mark of a real English major. The manifest lack of respect for the mores of the programming community is the sure sign of a n00b -- or a Java/.NET programmer -- who can not see a new computer technology in the context of the life of the field, because they are unaware of it.
...is to allow the economy to function more efficiently, through pervasive literacy, use of numbers, &c. It's in the interest of the wealthy if they can off load some of the organizational details to a large class of literate servants, but that's not the same as giving everyone a shot at wealth and power.
If it were just Asian countries, I might agree; but the U.S. lags those wild and free Northern European countries in matters like math skills and foreign language training.
According to ESL teachers, it takes seven years for an adult to learn a new language well enough that native speakers will want to talk to you. Although a child can probably acquire a language in less time than that, it is also true that the child will lose the language if he or she stops using it before adulthood. I have seen many arguments for the value of learning a second language, but they all strike me as flimsy. Please tell me why
a student who already knows English or even Spanish or Mandarin should invest thousands of hours learning a second language when there are more than enough sciences and practical arts with much clearer educational value to last anyone a lifetime of learning.
Well, if you don't place much weight on foreign language, that's okay -- my point still stands. U.S. performance in math and science is comparatively disappointing.
I can't really agree with your position on language learning, but I'm a little biased. I've studied Ancient Greek, German, Chinese and Middle English.
Well, it is easy. Mandarin is a quite useful language if you are living in China, but it wouldn't help you if you are in Iceland.
Also, I've heard (don't remember where...) that not all languages are equal when conveying an idea: for example eskimos have a lot of words for snow and white. Some concepts would be very hard to express in any other language.
My point of view is clearly viased: I speak Catalan and Spanish (mother tongues) and I'm more or less fluent in English (hoping to take the CPE this june).
Maybe it would be better if people always used cat, always used wc, &c. Sure, performance is better the other way -- but multiplying the functionality of each command comes at a price, namely that only grognards can do things "the right way". If we instead emphasized the way of distinctly separate commands for distinctly separate things...
If I understand it correctly, the idea with Reddit is that the
community can decide what news it wants to see, by posting links
and then filtering them. If the community wants hate speach (or
more of those Ron Paul links) and Reddit serves up hate speach,
then isn't the algorithm working?
I suppose you could actively ban users who skew the community in
that direction -- though you'd have an endless calvacade of sock
puppets to deal with.
I would like to hear more about why you use it. I used to use FreeBSD for everything, but it's my understanding that the once significant differences in performance and stability between Linux and BSD no longer amount to anything. I switched to Gentoo (can not give up source builds!) two years ago.
It typically has less to do with performance or stability than with ease of use. While Linux is piling on features, BSD focuses on clean design and quality of code and documentation. Linux is "do it now," BSD is "do it right."
I hate to press you on this point -- the wreckage of many a
flame war has barely had time to grow moss -- but can you point
to a specific feature? I assume you mean OS level features --
system calls and such.
Hmm... well, BSD init is easier to use than SysV init. The ports system is also known for its simplicity. The source code is contained in a single CVS tree and the entire OS can be built with a few commands. The man pages and handbook are consistent and well written.
Much of the difference is subjective. FreeBSD feels coherently designed, whereas Linux is a patchwork of programs written by different people with different styles and philosophies.
I don't know a lot about Gentoo (most of my experience is with Debian and Slackware) but from what I understand, its purpose is to be as flexible as possible. That's a legitimate goal, but it seems to conflict with ease of use.
Maintain: Python things. There are so many EGGs! If you need a new package for something or other -- the JSON parser isn't fast enough or something -- someone has made an alternative already. Performance matters for maintenance -- scalable deployment is still not easy, or cheap -- and it helps that Python has a fast core and syntactic shortcuts to things like generators (memory efficient) and list comprehensions (CPU efficient).