Re: Breakfast at Borders

From: Activ8 (reply2group_at_ndbbm.net)
Date: 07/04/04 

Date: Sat, 3 Jul 2004 22:10:14 -0400

On Sat, 3 Jul 2004 21:03:11 +0000 (UTC), Ken Smith wrote:

> In article <bt0ee01kj92btkng91kf0r36clflkq3s8d@4ax.com>,
> John Larkin <jjlarkin@highlandSNIPtechTHISnologyPLEASE.com> wrote:
>
> [...]
>>and evil W is. Hell, nobody THAT stupid could manage to be THAT evil.
>
> It depends on how you define stupid and evil. The polio virus isn't very
> clever and many would characterize it as evil. As far as I know however
> it has never been elected president so I'd bet that W is smarter than it.
>
>>Spent some time in the Computer Books section, which is as big on its
>>own as some entire bookstores I visit. There were, to my way of
>>thinking, no computer books at all, just huge volumes about how to use
>>bizarre applications.
>
> I too have noticed that there are very few books on subjects like
> programming. There are some on how to code and more on how to press a
> mouse button.

I think Barnes and Nobel are ok. There a physics section. I didn't
expect that. I did find a few good programming books but most of my
best ones (that would mainly be the Linux ones, like __Linux Rapid
Application Developement__, came from Ollie's discount for roughly
$3 US each. There was AoE and High Speed Digital Design (the Black
Arts one.) Not much else. Always tons of books on using apps - I can
get them at Ollie's cheap as dirt.
>
> For a long time now I've been charting the beginnings of the downfall of
> civilization. The fact that fewer and fewer people can do the specialized
> tasks is one of the things.

That's interesting. Buckminster Fuller wrote that specialization is
a bad thing. I think I know what you mean. Bucky was coming from a
different angle. It's __Spaceship Planet Earth__ that I'm referring
to, BTW.
>
> [...]
>>So: OS's and HLLs are supposed to make programming simpler by
>>abstracting all the nasty hardware and OS stuff. But I can write an
>>application in assembly or Power Basic quickly and without hassle,
>>with about 2" of reference books in total. What's the point of a
>>high-level language, if it just makes things more complex, and keeps
>>mere civilians from ever imagining they could write a program? Is
>>having a shaded Advanced_Text_Dialog_Box worth all this complexity?

Job security? I manage ok with C++ for winders apps. In Linux it's a
snap, really. Now that I use wxWidgets for a UI framework, the
Linux/winders demarcation is pretty fuzzy. wxPython and wxGlade are
nice, too.

I got stuck with two good references for .NET from the book club. I
kept them just in case, but I'll be avoiding any C# and .NET bs like
the plague.

If you wan't a cool "Basic like" (?) language, there's Ruby. I think
it was partly an open source rebuttal to VB .NET :) which, BTW,
those young dudes that developed Gnome were working on a Linux
framework compatible with .NET
>
> It is really a scam, when you come right down to it. If Windows versions
> didn't need more and more memory to run the PC makers would mostly go out
> of business. If new hardware was documented instead of having just some
> DLLs and drivers, people wouldn't need XP. They are obviously working
> together to force people to constantly spend to upgrade. Someday mankind
> will have to go back to living caves because their home security systems
> all use Windows CE and nobody can get in their own house anymore due to a
> bug.

Heh, heh, heh... I love it :) What would we do without idiots?
Comedians would starve to death for lack of material. 

-- 
Best Regards,
Mike
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